Where Reading Takes Us

We compulsive readers will read anything in sight, a habit that can use up a considerable amount of time.

What caught my eye while I was flipping through a catalogue recently was a small statue of Saint Jerome, early translator of the Bible into Latin from Greek and Hebrew. Jerome, it's said, left city life for the desert in order to seek holiness through self-denial. A compulsive reader himself, he found it hard to give up his beloved books and took them along. Some religious people understood this weakness and named him the patron saint of book lovers and libraries, anyway.

Legend has it that a lion with a thorn in its paw approached Jerome in the desert. By removing the animal's source of pain, Jerome earned the lion's gratitude. The beast watched over the saint and his books thereafter.

The catalogue's ad writer claims that's why libraries like the famous one in New York City are guarded by lions. Naturally, I had to look around the internet to see if I could validate that theory. No luck there, but I did make some discoveries. The iconic New York lions were designed by one man, Edward Clark Potter, then carved by an immigrant Italian family of master carvers. (These are the same folks, incidentally, who did the actual carving of Daniel Chester Frank's monumental Lincoln Memorial)

Originally, New York's lions were called Leo Astor and Leo Lennox after the men who financed them. During the Great Depression, however, Mayor LaGuardia renamed them Patience and Fortitude. This all seems a bit of a stretch, but make of it what you will.

In any event, writers have much need of patience and fortitude, and who knows, it might not hurt to call on St. Jerome once in a while.