Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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18 THE LOYOLA ANNUAL more delicate touch to the intellectual Adonis to attract his prospective reader-guests. If we could but see the careful word-artist, travelling for days in the uncouth mountain fast- nesses to gain color for one more vivid touch to the beauty of his scene; if we could follow him for days into the fetid retreats of the slums, striving to place one more realistic speech on the tongue of one of his characters, then we would not rush so heedlessly by and neglect altogether the child which he has, with such infinite pains, dressed in gorgeous raiment. Merest justice dictates that we pause to gaze at the beauty of the work, that we should meet the pains-taking labor on the part of the author with correlative care and intelligent perusal on our part. Even more obvious is the careless reader’s unfairness to himself. When he has closed the book upon the last chapter and allows a space of time to elapse, in the meantime de- vouring a new mass of reading matter, and then endeavor to call to mind some profit gained from it, what happens? He finds that the matter lies, unassimilated, deep down in his mind, hidden under the layers of literature more recently taken in, while he has garnered practically nothing from those per- manent sheaves of gold that may be gleaned from every book worthy of the name. Such reading reminds one of the tale of the plutocrat who hired the most famous chef in all the land and then persisted in bolting down, unmasticated, the most delicious products of h;s skill. It is not to be inferred from the foregoing that we enlist our sympathies upon the side of the tiresome pedant who chortles in disgust at a ripping football story or rolls his eyes in horror when the hero tenderly takes the heroine into his arms, or of the consumptive bookworm who pores all his nights over musty tomes of antiquity — but this is upon the other end of the axis of extremes and belongs, properly, to another essay. What

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THE LOYOLA ANNUAL 17 KtUntwxL ’’ AVE you ever noticed, as you traversed some tract of tangled, half-cleared woodland, in what a desultory manner certain berry pickers endeavor to fill their receptacles? On they rush, from bush to bush, after the fashion of the bob- bing humming bird, ever drawn further and further into the copse by a sort of mental mirage of more luscious berries on the bush beyond, neglecting the while the toothsome harvest which would be theirs did they but pause to draw aside the foliage on perhaps any one of the slighted shrubs. Their wonted reward is entanglement in some inadvertent morass, while their more staid companions saunter joyfully homeward with bursting baskets, a bulging guerdon for pleasant, re- quited labor. Much after this fashion do readers peruse their books. Some fancy that voraciousness atones for a lack of thorough- going study of them. They rush pell-mell through a book and straightway crush out its fertile seeds of thought in their minds by weighing them down beneath the burden of another mass of reading matter. Like the berry pickers, they run on and on without plucking the true v ealth of fruitage which should be theirs. Reading of this sort is not only most regrettable, but it is also unfair, both to the reader and to the author. When a writer takes up his pen to convey the message of his impressionistic heart through the mouths of the book’s char- acters, to the great world of his readers, he labors over his brain-child — the book — with a loving care of which the average reader has scarce the slightest conception. No trial is too onerous, no sacrifice too costly, which enables him to add one

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REV. JOSEPH I. ZIEGLER, S. J Moderator Alumni Association.