NEED FOR MORE LABELS

Hokitika Guardian, 6 January 1931, Page 2

NEED FOR MORE LABELS

i.= THE RAILWAY CARRIAGES.

“I wish carriages in railway trains were labelled, instead of ‘smoking’, and non-smoking,’-, ‘talking’ - -.and. ‘noiltalking.’ ” This statement was • made ■by? Dean Inge, when he was the guest of‘honour, recently, at a dinner given by the National Liberal Club’s Literary Circle. Mr J. A. Spencer, who presided, referred to the' deaii as “the gadfly of the Athenians.”

Discussing the art of reading, Dean Inge .said: “This, of course, is a reading ■ age.' I am' assured that 17,000,000 persons in England read on an average 12 books a year. Then there are at least 30,000,000 people who read newspapers—at least, the betting news and perhaps a crime or two.

“This reading is quite a new thing. The, ancients did not read much, but the Romans used to rend aloud a great deal. Now, some people read a great deal too much, just as some people talk too much, Rapid reading is. a habit which one may fall into like tile habit of • drinking. The worst of it is that nothing sticks.

■“I wont to put in a word for reading aloud. If you rend to yourself, you read much too fast. If you read aloud, you go just the right pace. My wife and I read aloud to? each other every morning before we get up.” The choice of. books, the clean proceeded, gets harder and harder, and people cannot see the trees for the wood. “I think,” said, “that there are fewer really great hooks than forrporly,. Old books require more education than new ones.”

Urging that people should read what then enjoy, Dean Inge said: “Reading against; the" grain simply means that nothing sticks. Our reading . should he focussed round our chief interests.

“Of course, we ought not to read only English books. Then, what foreign books? Certainly, the Bible. There is no book which loses so little in translation as the New Testament.

“Of course, we want fiction, and here I put in a strong claim for the old English classical novel —Walter Scott,. Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, and others. These books are pure and wholesome—a quality I greatly miss in many of our modern novels.”

Speaking of reading newspapers, the dean said that the great advantage of newspapers was that people read them in trains and that prevented them from talking.