90 
THE KUKAL NEW-YOKKEK 
jyi4. 
I. Freedom, Dwell With Knowledge; 
I Abide With Men by Culture Trained 
and Fortified. 
The best book-readers live in the coun¬ 
try. During the long, quiet Winter 
evenings there is time to read a book 
without interruptions, and the reader 
may get the full spirit of the author. 
The really strong books are those which 
induce thought. The great author leaves 
the best of his message unprinted. It 
lies between the lines, and the reader 
must think it out in his own way. There 
are too many “skimmers” who dash 
through book after book for recreation, 
or merely to occupy the time. A woman 
once told us that she had nothing left 
to read—having run through every book 
in the neighborhood. It was found that 
she could give only the merest details 
regarding some of the strongest books 
she had “read.” When she came to 
something which required thought she 
skipped it in order to “go on with the 
story.” Country people as a rule have 
access to fewer books than town people 
can reach. That is why the good book 
in the country is studied and pondered 
over, while amid the distractions of the 
town it would be merely skimmed 
through. 
For true thinking is hard work. It 
must be hard for through it the man 
must run the gauntlet to knowledge. No 
nation ever fought its way to permanent 
freedom with the sword alone. Men 
can be free only through knowledge. That 
is why we would discourage the read¬ 
ing of what we call fool or foul books. 
The fool book may tickle or please the 
mind for a moment, but it do«% not make 
the reader think —which is the true end 
of reading. The continued reading of 
fool and foul books leaves the mind in¬ 
capable of clear thought or reasoning. 
We have a friend who considers Tolstoi’s 
“Ivan The Fool” the most thoughtful 
satire on modern government that ever 
was written. Yet we gave that to an¬ 
other friend and he pronounced it the 
most stupid, childish tiling he ever tried 
to read. “Nothing in it.” One man got 
the vision and meaning which the author 
put between the lines. The other could 
not get back of the printed word. So 
when we ask our readers to name their 
useful books we mean the volumes which 
have given them a mental struggle and 
taken them away from themselves. To 
put it another way. a book should be a 
tool and not a plaything. There are till 
sorts of tools. Some of us have come 
to the point (or remained there) where 
we can only think of a tool as something 
we can take in the hand and use for 
manual labor. Does not everyone know 
that the mind directs the hand and the 
tool which it may handle? A mental tool 
therefore may mean better work and more 
work if it will make the mind broader 
and quicker. The value of a book all 
comes back to its ability to make the 
reader think. It may give him facta, but 
unless it can in some way make him 
think and reason from those facts they 
are dead. We know a practical man who 
says he reads the old “Confessions of 
St. Augustine” over every year! Here 
is a mental tool which 1,500 years cannot 
dull or discard. Yet our friend says he 
is a better farmer and a better citizen 
from the undying thought which this old 
book gives him. Friends tell him that a 
modern discussion, perhaps like “The In¬ 
side of the Cup,” would be more “up-to- 
date,” but he sticks to the old “Confes¬ 
sions.” — 
A book which has made me think hard 
is “Newest England,” by II. D. Lloyd. 
This is a new series of essays on the so¬ 
cial and political conditions in Australia 
and New Zealand. It is evidently writ¬ 
ten by a man who started out to prove 
his theories if possible, yet the state¬ 
ments have never been controverted. 
Without question the individual which 
we call “the common man” has a fairer 
chance in New Zealand than in this 
country. It is easier to acquire land and 
work it, and harder to monopolize on a 
special privilege. I can easily see that 
our conditions are vastly different and 
that we could not put into practice some 
of the things which have become fixed in 
New Zealand. Yet I am sure that the 
present upset and turmoil in politics with 
us is caused by the plain instinct of 
the common people shaking itself to de¬ 
mand what “Newest England” has long 
enjoyed. If 50,000 farmers in New 
York State could read this book slowly 
until they understood every word of it, 
Albany would be shaken up from the 
bottom. j. n. j. 
There are as many ways to tell about 
books as to introduce people; the most 
frequent is the short notice, like the 
hasty introduction of a waiting line at 
a public reception. Then there is the 
longer and more pompous “review,” 
Spring Will Soon Be Here. 
which is the “We have with us this even¬ 
ing” of the toastmaster introducing the 
prominent citizen. But once in a while 
some friend of yours will say that he 
has a friend whom lie would like to have 
you know, and he wants to tell you about 
him first, and that is the sort of talk 
about friends—or books—that is worth 
while. 
The young people from nine to ninety 
among The It. N.-Y. readers will be glad 
to know Dan and Una and Puck. The 
children didn’t mean to call Puck out 
of his Hill, but lie came, Mr. Kipling tells 
us, in “Puck of Pook’s Hill,” and “Re¬ 
wards and Fairies,” and took away their 
Doubt and Fear and gave them “seizen” 
of Old England. And then—out on the 
rolling Downs deep in the oak woods, and 
even in their own meadow there came to 
them the shadows of those who had lived. 
Of course the tales mean more to Eng¬ 
lish children, but we are so near akin 
that if we can sing: 
“Land of our Birth, our faith, our pride, 
For whose dear sake our fathers died; 
O Motherland, we pledge to thee, 
Head, heart and hand through the years 
to be!” 
we will be glad to know Dan and Una 
and the friends they met. And some older 
folks, city-bound for years, will think of 
the home town as it used to be on Sum¬ 
mer evenings and find themselves softly 
saying: 
“Oh hop vine yellow and wood smoke 
blue! 
I reckon you’ll keep me middling true.” 
F. D. C. 
The home feeling carried out in an or¬ 
chard;—an immense orchard in Indiana, 
planted with apple trees, with two rows 
of peach trees around the sides, which in 
bloom make it look like a great soft, 
pinkish, white blanket, with a deep pink 
border, spread lightly on the green earth 
—would alone promise a book of more 
than ordinary interest, and offer an as¬ 
surance that the man who would plan 
such an orchard, spending hours looking 
over that particular stretch of land, was 
more than an ordinary character. It 
would, too, assure you that his family 
of 11 children would not move and think 
in ordinary channels. In “Laddie,” by 
Gene Stratton Porter, we have such a 
family. The story is told by Little Sis¬ 
ter, and she relates the everyday home 
happenings and it is full of fairylike fan¬ 
cies and stirring interest, including two 
beddings in the same church at the same 
time, not to mention those which go be¬ 
fore. Little Sister’s unfailing love for 
Laddie and her belief in the fairies, helps 
in the happy denouement of his court¬ 
ship of the “Princess,” and the reconcilia¬ 
tion of the respective fathers. The bright 
childish philosophy which Little Sister 
brings to bear on these homely every¬ 
day occurrences, with the apropos quo¬ 
tations from McGuffey’s Sixth Reader, 
gives you the feeling that you are living 
the life with therif—life with a clean, 
wholesome, interesting family. Their 
joys and sorrows are yours and the ex¬ 
citement rippling through will cause you 
to close the book longing for more. Their 
loYe for outdoors is so invigorating you 
wish to take your hat and go out too. 
_ M. G. K. 
The Left Hand. 
On page 1350, in speaking of left- 
handed children, the Hope Farm man 
thinks this is caused by differences in 
the lobes of the brain. We know to a 
certainty that the muscles of the right 
side of the body are controlled by. brain 
elements in the left side of the cranium, 
while the muscles of the left side of the 
body are controlled by brain elements in 
the right side of the cranium. So ac¬ 
curately have post mortems and surgical 
operations following attacks of paralysis 
disclosed the seat of the trouble causing 
the paralysis, that by studying the or¬ 
gans paralyzed we can tell with almost 
absolute certainty just where in the brain 
the blood clot may be found in any given 
case. If a man gets a blow directly on 
the top of the head of sufficient force, his 
legs will be for the time being at least 
paralyzed, so that if a man is stricken 
with paralysis of the legs we know that 
the blood clot will be found in the top 
region of the brain. By the same tests 
we know if an arm is paralyzed the 
blood clot lies farther down toward the 
region of the ear. Still farther down we 
find the areas that successively control 
the mouth, the lips, throat and tongue. 
If the paralysis is on the right side of 
the body we know that the blood clot is 
in the left brain, whatever the region 
may be. Conversely if "the paralysis on 
the left side of the body the blood clot 
will be found in right brain. 
From the foregoing facts it seems that 
the motor forces of the body are origin¬ 
ated in either or both sides of the brain. 
But not so the intellectual faculties. Just 
below the region of the brain that con¬ 
trols the tongue we find what is known 
as Broca’s convolution, which is not 
much larger than a pea. It has been 
demonstrated that this little body is the 
sole center of articulate speech. It seems 
to control directly the muscles of the 
tongue, mouth, throat and lips. Hence 
an injury to that little organ renders 
speech more or less impossible. Now 
there is a close relation existing between 
speech and gesture, and as that part of 
the brain which controls the arms and 
hands lies next to the brain that con¬ 
trols speech, there seems to be good rea¬ 
son for the use of gesture as an aid to 
speech. It is true at least that an ef¬ 
fective use of gesture in a set speech 
helps greatly to impress an audience 
Now note this fact, that in the right- 
handed the speech center is always in the 
left brain, and not in both, while in the 
left-handed it is always in the right brain. 
It is true there *is a Broca’s convolution 
in both the right and left brains, but 
only one is used. However, if the con¬ 
volution on one side is damaged in youth 
it is possible for the individual slowly 
to learn to talk. But if the damage oc¬ 
curs in middle life or after that, speech is 
rarely regained, even though the individ¬ 
ual seemingly recovers in other respects. 
Now what has right-handedness to do 
with this nobody knows. I am inclined 
to believe that in some way it is a hered¬ 
itary trait that most people are right- 
handed, but not because one lobe of the 
brain is larger than the other. I have 
never read in any authority that the 
left lobe of Broca’s convolution is larger 
in the right-handed than in the left. Dr. 
W. Hanna Thomson of New York City, 
an eminent authority, has written a small 
book which he has very appropriately 
called “Brain and Personality” in which 
this whole thing is more completely 
thrashed out than in any other book, T 
believe, in existence. He sums up his 
discussion of right-handedness and left- 
handedness by saying, "as the right hand 
is the oftenest used for every purpose, it 
is of the two hands oftenest used for 
gesture, which means of course for lan¬ 
guage. As soon as other parts were 
sought for to cooperate with gesture in 
language, the appeal would necessarily 
be to the neighboring centers in the left 
brain. It would not be long therefore, 
before the habit became settled to use 
only parts in the left brain for this spe¬ 
cialized work, until finally the habit be¬ 
came fixed for life.” Why some people 
are left-handed we do not know. This 
discussion on right-handedness and left- 
handedness comes down to us from an¬ 
cient times, and is ever renewed.” 
This book of Dr. Thomson’s is, I 
think, an epoch-making book in the dis¬ 
cussion of the brain and the person. He 
aims to show that there is an indwelling 
personality within every human body 
which uses the brain as an instrument. 
I do not see with his array of facts how 
his conclusions can be gainsaid. At any 
rate it is a book to be reckoned with, and 
should be read by every thinker, and it 
will make him realize that he “has an¬ 
other think coming.” a. w. foreman. 
Illinois. 
The Wail of the Well. 
Johnny Jones has lost a leg, 
Fanny’s deaf and dumb, 
Marie has epileptic fits, 
Tom’s eyes are on the bum. 
Sadie stutters when she talks, 
Mabel has T. B., 
Morris is a splendid case of imbecility. 
Billy Brown’s a truant, 
And Harold is a thief, 
Teddy’s parents gave him dope 
And so he came to grief. 
Gwendolin’s a millionaire, 
Jerald is a fool. 
So every one of these darned kids 
Goes to a special school. 
They’ve specially nice teachers, 
And special things to wear, 
And special time to play in, 
And a special kind of air; 
They’ve special lunches, right in school, 
While I—it makes me wild ! 
I haven’t any specialties, 
I’m just a normal child. 
—May Ayres, in The American School 
Board Journal. 
FUN AT RECESS. 
