Libraries and leisure

Ars est celare artem seems to be an appropriate motto for the library publishing world. At least that is the sour conclusion reached by one unsuccessful editor in search of a publisher, his MS—the text of a week's conference on the relationship between public libraries, the arts, and the community of no apparent interest to our professional communicants. The rich thesaurus of thought, word and even deed lay, a battered typescript in the bottom drawer of his desk, no temptation whatsoever to the moguls of publishing; not even to the college which begat it. The cover was stained, not with the Tears of the Muses, but with the coffee cups of readers unmoved by the prospect that their terse rejection might be the murder of a gallant enterprise. They were as lachrymose as those Muses in their regrets, but firm in the conviction that symposia were not selling this year.