I have seldom been at a luncheon which succeeded in
its friendly purpose so well as that given. to Mr. Ernest Rhys on his seventy-fifth birthday_ one day this week. All the world, almost in the literal sense of the term, knows of Mr. Rhys as the founder and. editor of Dent's Everyman series of classics, that magnificently represen. tative collection of the best books of all countries, which has played an historic part in making literature accessible to millions of English-speaking people. As. any reader of his admirable autobiography may know, literature and the literary life have been for Mr. Rhys a sort of prolonged romantic quest, extremely arduous, with scanty .material rewards, but to this day, if I am not mistaken, pursued with a sort of youthful zest. The thousand volumes of the Everyman Library over whose issue Ernest Rhys has presided are the best of all memorials of his zeal, * *
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