* * *
In an almanack, which is printed once a year, or in a dictionary or
encyclopedia, which is republished after ten or twenty years, you would
expect to find fewer errors than in a daily newspaper; but apparently
time has little to do with it. Consulting the Britannica's article on
Anatole France, we were inexpressibly shocked to find therein the
atrocities, "L'Ile des Penguins" and "Maurice Barres."
* * *
We were looking through the France sketch to see whether there was
mention of a story he wrote before he became well known, entitled
"Marguerite." A Paris publisher found it recently in a magazine and
asked M. France to write a preface to it, that it might be issued as a
book. Quoth France: "It would be an excess of literary vanity on my part
to resurrect the story. But my vanity would, perhaps, be greater were I
to try to suppress it."
* * *
Reference books, as is well known, improve like wine with age, and the
efficiency of our proof room is to be accounted for, in part, by the
vintage volumes that line its library shelf. There are sixty of these
rare old tomes, and five of them are useful; these being, we think,
first editions. There is a Who's Who of the last century that is still
in good condition, and the dictionary of biography with which
Lippincotts began business. Bibliophiles would, we believe, enjoy
looking over the shelf.
* * *