In the book just published, "Universities--American, English, German," by Abraham Flexner, than whom there is no mere distinguished educational authority in America, Rollins College is listed with Columbia, Chicago, Dartmouth, Michigan and Vassar and others as having established professorships beneath the dignity of an institution of higher learning.

Dr. Flexner criticizes Rollins College for having a professor of books. The professorship is a novelty. Granted. But the idea of such a professorship is far from novel. In 1856 no less an immortal than Ralph Waldo Emerson, in an essay on "Books," said:

"Meanwhile, the colleges, whilst they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books, and I think no chair is so much wanted."

It was this sentence that suggested to Rollins to call Professor Edwin O. Grover to occupy the first chair in books in the United States, and we are quite proud of it. Emerson added that there were plenty of "grooms of books" in our colleges, by which he meant "librarians," but a professor of books was much more to be desired.

Professor Grover, who is also the director of our library and who maintains a private printing press as a laboratory for the use of the students, who also was one of the founders of the only book store in town, offers three book courses at Rollins: The History of the Book, Literary Personalities and Recreational Reading.

As to what students who have taken his courses think of him, I quote from Miss Stella Weston, one of the editors of "The Flamingo" (the Rollins literary magazine, which Mr. Grover founded and which the director of the New York Public Library has said is "the best undergraduate literary publication that comes to my desk"):

"The manner in which Mr. Grover develops book enthusiasts from literary anaemics could be adopted to advantage by other professors throughout the country. It is a painless process to cultural development which overtakes the student unaware....

"Mr. Grover stimulates and inspires student creativeness, is easily interrupted within the classroom and easily buttonholed without. He has spread his doctrine of book love so thoroughly that not only the campus but the entire community has become book-minded."

If the library ought to be the heart of a college, I rather agree with Emerson that the heart of a library ought to be a professor of books.

--Hamilton Holt in a letter to the New York Herald Tribune.