NEVER TOO OLD TO LEARN

Two of our volunteers put together another interesting display in the glass case outside the Bullis Room, and we invite you to stop and take a close look at it on your next trip to the library. It contains books from the collection that offer the reader learning experiences in a variety of subjects. 

There's Hints for Home Reading, Book Buyers Guide and a Book Record, which is described as "a series of papers on books and their use," edited by Lyman Abbott and published in New York in 1900.  This book bears Abram R. Bullis's bookplate, and we can imagine him studying this book in his search for titles to add to his library. 

There are 14 volumes displayed. Their subjects range from technical books on organic chemistry, physics,  economics, algebra, and hydraulic motors to the history of art. There's even a book on eighth-grade poetry that was published in 1906.

The size of the Bullis collection and the variety of subjects, genres, and authors indicate that all generations of Bullises were avid lifelong readers and considered themselves never too old to learn. As a result we now have their collection to enjoy--so let's do it.

THE HASH KNIFE OUTFIT by Zane Grey

"Mert Bartels won the honors in our Bullis Book Review Contest's over-18 category. His review is reprinted below for your reading enjoyment.

"Jed Stone, a low end cattle rustler and leader of the 20 year outfit in the untamed, wild area in the Tonto Basin and Mongollon rim country of Arizona, exemplifies the many characteristics of how the westerner lived up to the Code of the West. Like many Jed Stone, due to circumstances early in his life, was forced onto the wrong side of the law. Good men as well as bad men exhibited these virtues: loyalty, courage, hard workers, untalkative and protector of women and children, well for the most part. Stone's dilemma is whether he continues to manhandle the Outfit or to alter his ways to leave outlawry.

"Zane Grey also weaves into the novel the Traft family Diamond Ranch with its array of mostly young cowhands who face the natural elements, mean cows, low-down rustlers, dishonest gamblers, and two young women of opposite upbringing. Uncle Jim Traft has nephew Jim, who is a year new to the West, ramrod the Diamond. Jim's ill-health, purpled-eyed sister, Gloriana with an Eastern education and ways, appears suddenly from Missouri with a past that she wants unrevealed. Her bad experience with a gambler named Darnell spelled past family troubles and future ones too as Darnell has tracked her west. Meanwhile, young Jim has not only fallen for a low country girl named Molly Dunn from the Cibeque Valley, but he plans to marry her despite Gloriana's objections. The problems begin between Gloriana and Molly because apparently it's easier for ten men in a bunkhouse to get along than two women in one ranch house. Gloriana convinces Molly that she is unfit to marry her  brother since she has only back woods upbringing, thus Molly moves to town to work and get away from moonstruck Jim.

"An unusually enjoyable part of the story is how simple cowhands compete to spruce themselves up for the Thanksgiving dance in town and outdoing one another at Christmas time. Grey is a master of dialog to convey their joshing each other and their fawning all over the ladies from the ranch as well as the Flag town girls. No modern day writer can equal his use of western talk and character mood. He too vividly describes rock-faced canyons, hues of the forestry and amber colored  brooks, plus wildlife sounds.

"Besides attending to the Diamond ranch young Jim finds he is given land in Yellow Jacket country by his uncle. Jim sees this as an opportunity to build an adjacent ranch and pine-pole log house for his bride-to-be Molly. As Jim and cowhands build the ranch house some Diamond cattle are stolen. Something disruptive happens to Uncle Jim. From this point the bad element seems to control the action.

"The western genre extended by Grey herein evolves into the traditional battle between good and bad elements. Croak Malloy, vicious weasel-faced gunman, Sonora, a Mexican with no ethics, and Madden both gunhand and cook comprise some of the bad element. Malloy in every back-handed attempt tries to lead the rustlers away from Jed Stone to become the Hash Knife's leader. When will the inevitable confrontation between these two occur as we learn more of their inward code and beliefs brings us closer to the end? Malloy who is loyal only to himself joins forces with Bambridge, a dishonest cattle buyer, the cheating gambler Darnell and other rustlers to remove 5000 head of Diamond stock. What is to become of the Hash Knife Outfit as the potential for leadership may change?

The next question becomes what the Diamond hands and young Jim will do to thwart the rustlers. Who will rescue the kidnapped Gloriana and Molly from the outlaw cabin? Also, will Gloriana evolve into a tough, resilient western woman? Only the reader knows."

GREETINGS FROM THE PAST

A Christmas postcard from the collection,

bearing an early 1900 postmark.

A Merry Christmas To You and Yours

from

The Bullis Room Volunteers

THE ART OF COMMUNICATION

"I'll write a letter soon but now, as time is pressing hard, to let you know I think of you, I send this postal card."
(Owen Card Pub. Co., Elmira, New York)

Earlier this month, we featured a few vintage postcards from this collection. To use a familiar phrase, there are lots more where those came from. We began this week by poring over another stack of these cards, and smiled at messages written over 80 years ago, such as, "When are you coming to visit us, cousin?" or "I got new boots!"

How many of us today take time to write a note to a friend just to say hello? (No, those on-vacation, "Wish you were here," cards don't count!) Has letter writing become a lost art in our society of almost-instant communication? The cards in this collection are inspiring some of us to pick up our pens a bit more often.

THE PRESIDENT'S FLAG DAY ADDRESS

In honor of Flag Day, we share with you the first two and last paragraphs of The President's Flag Day Address With Evidence of Germany's Plans, delivered by President Woodrow Wilson on June 14, 1917, in Washington, D.C.

"My Fellow Citizens:

We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag which we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us--speaks to us of the past, of the men and women who went before us and of the records they wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth; and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has floated on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people. We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be millions, of our men, the young, the strong, the capable men of the Nation, to go forth and die beneath it on fields of blood far away--for what? For some unaccustomed thing? For something for which it has never sought the fire before? American armies were never before sent across the seas. Why are they sent now? For some new purpose, for which this great flag has never been carried before, or for some old, familiar, heroic purpose for which it has seen men, its own men, die on every battle field upon which Americans have borne arms since the Revolution?

... We are Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve her with no private purpose. We must use her flag as she has always used it. We are accountable at the bar of history and must plead in utter frankness what purpose it is we seek to serve."

If you would like to read the entire speech, ask a Bullis Room volunteer to access Document 2634 from our archives.