THE MAN WHO LIVES IN PARADISE.

A. C. Gilbert with Marshall McClintock '26.New York: Rinehart, 1954. 374 pp. $3-75.

Virgil's great classical line, "Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit," if my Latin serves me correctly, translates to "Perhaps someday it will be pleasing for you to recall these things" - and no more apt quotation could be found for The Man Who Lives in Paradise by A. C. Gilbert with Marshall McClintock '26. For Virgil recognized that wonderful quality in the human memory which during the span of years turns the tragedies and crises of youth into the nostalgic memories of old age.

And it is in this nostalgic vein that Alfred C. Gilbert, founder of the A. C. Gilbert Company best known for their Erector Sets, American Flyer Trains and chemistry sets, looks back with the help of Marshall McClintock over nearly four-score years of a busy, fruitful and very rewarding life.

Perhaps because of this nostalgic approach one never quite comes to grips with A. C. Gilbert as a human being. We marvel at his accomplishments - a world's record-holder in the pole vault, an Olympic champion, the founder of the leading toy manufacturing company in the world, a life-long sportsman and hunter, civic leader and father - it is all chronicled in the nearly 400 pages of this semi-autobiography. Yet the spirit of the man, his philosophy and the doubts, fears, hopes, struggles that are present in all human lives are brushed lightly aside leaving only a man who. like his Erector toys, seems to be mechanically constructed without a motivating force.

Few men, however, can come to grips with themselves, and Gilbert's writing may well be pardoned for its sentimentality and gloss. McClintock has done well in correlating the newspaper clippings, diaries, letters and quotations with Gilbert's text, but the reader wishes that in playing Boswell to Gilbert, Mr. McClintock had been able to probe deeper into the makeup of a man who must be a very vital and interesting personality.

Gilbert's paradise is a man-made one, but paradise in any form is not easily come by. And for those who seek, the answer is not to be found in this volume as it was not to be found in the Horatio Alger stories of yesteryear. Still one can hope and strive and perhaps in time our memories, like Gilbert's, will create their own paradise.