Ex Libris

At ten a.m. Wednesday morning the doors of the Unitarian Church opened. The crowd rushed in. Some came with boxes, some with shopping bags, some with only their bare hands. They clawed, pushed, shoved. Sweet dowagers fought burly sophomores; professionals, amateurs, spectators, and bystanders joined the fray And all for old books and old Bryn Mawr.

The Bryn Mawr book sale has been running for four years now, and the response is always the same. 10,000 to 12,000 books are sold in two and a half days, netting almost $3000 for the Bryn Mawr scholarship fund. Books are donated by Bryn Mawr alumnae (e.g. Mmes Nathan Pusey, Merle Fainsod, David Riesman) and their friends, marked at bargain prices by Mrs. L. H. Butterfield (Mr. Buttefield is editor of the Adams Papers), and sold to first comers at the church on Garden Street.

New volumes are added to the stock from time to time to keep the crowds coming. And as an added inducement, on the last day (today) all remaining books go at half price.

The customer is rarely unsatisfied. For ten, twenty-five, or fifty cents he can take home an outdated best-seller, an old classic, or a valuable curiosity. There are, of course, those who stoically lament the one that got away. ("If I could get my hands on that little old lady who took the complete set of Oscar Wilde for $250, I'd brain her").

Professors are significantly absent from the proceedings. Perhaps because they are busy doing research. More likely because they fear to find on the ten-cent table to books which earned them tenure.