Josephus Nelson Larned

Books, Culture and Character Josephus Nelson Larned

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906. Excerpt: ... A FAMILIAR TALK ABOUT BOOKS' I WAS asked to say something to you about books; but when I began to collect my thoughts it seemed to me that the subject on which I really wished to speak is not well denned by the word Books. If you had been invited to listen to a discourse on baskets, you would naturally ask, " Baskets of what?" The basket, in itself, would seem to be a topic so insignificant that you might reasonably object to the wasting of time on it. It is a thing which has no worth of its own, but borrows all its useful value from the things which are put into it. It belongs to a large class of what may be called the conjunctive utensils of mankind--the vessels and vehicles which are good for nothing but to hold together and to carry whatever it may be that men need to convey from one to another or from place to place. 1 Addressed originally to the students of the Central High School, Buffalo, N. Y. Now, books are utensils of that class quite as distinctly as baskets are. In themselves, as mere fabrications of paper and ink, they are as worthless as empty wickerware. They differ from one another in value and in interest precisely as a basket of fruit differs from a basket of coals, or a basket of garbage from a basket of flowers,--which is the difference of their contents, and that only. So it is not, in reality, of books that I wish to speak, but of the contents of books. It may be well for us to think of books in that way, as vessels--vehicles--carriers--because it leads us, I am sure, to more clearly classified ideas of them. It puts them all into one category, to begin with, as carriers in the commerce of mind with mind; which instantly suggests that there are divisions of kind in that commerce, very much as / there are divisions of kind in the mer...