TRANSIT MEN ABE SO MASCULINE (Continued) STAR WISH "'What star is a blue wish Spun like song around this heart, O cold Blue moon bloom fallen on my lips, O cold and silver diadem Of love's defeat. Everyone sat in silence. Someone in the back of the room sniffed softly. Mr. Grover cleared his throat, removed his glasses from the bridge of his nose and polished them briskly. "Well, class, what have you to say to this student?" A hand went up and lazily circled in the air. "Yes, Joyce." "What does it mean?" All eyes were turned with horror-struck attention upon the impious one. Cynthia smiled faintly. "I'm afraid I've said it the best way I know how. If you don't understand, I don't know quite how to tell you." Mr. Grover interrupted. "My suggestion would be that Cynthia leave the poem as it is. I shouldn't like to have the spontaneity or the er ephemeral purity of metaphor spoiled." What a darling Mr. Grover was. She was just beginning to discover him. He had such piercing blue eyes under the deep jagged line of his brows. And he wasn't really old. She liked men to be silent and rugged and sort of independent like that yet intelligent. For a moment she had a feeling that he might understand, almost if she could tell him. Outdoors the day was as warm as fresh honey. The clover was full of bees and the boys practicing for spring track were pink with perspiration. Cynthia went dreamily down the steps of the school. The musical horn of a low blue convertible parked at the curb brought her to attention. A tall young man stood up in the front seat and waved. She beamed at him. "Kurt, you precious!" He looked at her approvingly. "Get in here, you brat, before I take a dull hack-saw to you. I've been waiting patiently for an hour like a nursemaid." "You're so satisfactory." She cuddled more snugly under his right arm. "Where are we going?" "Up to the lake to get a little combination sailboat-leg-art for the drool section of the Sunday Herald. You can hold the flash-bulbs. Then we'll stay for dinner and dancing at the Inn." Cynthia sighed. "I've had such a miserable day. "You've no idea." She looked up at him. I'd almost forgotten how handsome he is. Blonde men are terribly attractive with tan skins. He always knows what to do when I'm unhappy, the darling. Sometimes I almost think he'd understand me. LITERATURE (Continued) emotional behavior which is conducive to human happiness. And literature is one significant means of blocking out the bad emotions with the good. In doing so, literature offers a major contribution to the development of the individual. Literature awakens and refines our emotional nature by making it possible for us to live vicariously under the influence of an emotionally elevating experience. By repeating such vicarious experiences in our lives, we provoke the liklihood that we will respond upon an emotionally mature plane when we meet real situations in life. Take for example Abraham Lincoln's noble love affair with Ann Rutledge. It is impossible for us to go vicariously with Abraham Lincoln down to the grave of Ann Rutledge, to sit with him on a stone near her grave, and to watch the tears trickle down between his fingers as he places his hands over his face and says, "My heart is buried there", without feeling that there is a significance and a nobility attached to a beautiful love experience. Living this experience emotionally with Abraham Lincoln, and we can do it in literature, is ennobling. Certain base desires may be blocked out of our emotional nature by experiencing with Wordsworth his conscience stricken attitude resulting from his having stolen a boat on one occasion when he was in search of pleasure. Wordsworth writes: One summer evening (led by her) I found A little boat tied to a willow tree Within a rocky cove, its usual home. Straight 1 unloosed her chain, and stepping in Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth And troubled pleasure, not without the voice Of mountain echoes did my boat move on. I dipped my oars into the silent lake, And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat Went cleaving through the water like a swan; When, from behind the craggy steep till then The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge. As if with voluntary power instinct upreared its head. I struck and struck again, CONTINUED ON PAGE 39 34 WINTER, 1943 THE BOOKSHOP THE library. It is the retreat of the theme writing student. It is the home of Mervin Curl, the Readers' Guide, the glue-pot, and the would-be hermit. It is the scene of many and varied activities of a staff of self-sacrificing librarians who devote their lives to checking out books, collecting fines, keeping track of cards, and patiently searching, upon request, for reference material on every subject from Confucious to guppies. And it is the source of reading matter for every mood. The Raymond Gram Swing addict keeps track of the war's progress by means of Time magazine and the latest maps. The nature lover selects a quiet corner and withdraws happily into his shell with Peattie's new article on cactus plants. Such peacefully studious scenes are common in the library. But beyond the polished table tops and the rows of encyclopedias is a section unknown to most students. It is a repair room equipped with every imaginable tool for restoring old books to use and initiating new ones. This is the room where discouraged old copies of College Composition go with sagging backs and ragged corners, to emerge with new stiffening and bright coatings of shellac. It is the place where books fresh from the publishers are stripped of their gay jackets, rubber-stamped, and marked with business-like numbers for classification. STUDENT MEMBERS OF STAFF GOSSIP AS THEY REPAIR OLD VOLUMES. Left to right: RUTH PARRY, HELEN HILL, AND VIRGINIA BIDDLE. 612.39 B65v Borsook, Henry, 1897- Vitamins, what they are and how they can benefit you, by Henry Borsook New York, The Viking press, 1940. xiii p., 1 l., 193 incl. tables. 21 1/2. Pages 167-168 on folded leaf. "First published in November 1940." 1. Vitamins. Library of Congress QPS01.V5858 1940 40-27833 Copy 2. Copyright [41x5] 612.39 INSIDE THE CARD CATALOGUE - BOOKS LISTED IN TRIPLICATE (AUTHOR, SUBJECT, AND TITLE), MAKE TERM PAPERS ON ANY SUBJECT EASY. THESE SHELVES MAKE HERMITS OF BRIGHTLY BOUND BOOKS, WHO YIELD THEIR STIFF BACKS ONLY TO THE PRIVILEGED WHO CAN "GO BEHIND." STUDENTS FIND THE MAGAZINE ROOM WITH ITS CURRENT MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPERS, AND PAMPHLETS A NICE PLACE TO BE BETWEEN CLASSES. 35