The editor of Banker & Tradesman keeps a Bible on his desk – Old Testament, New Testament, various middle-aged Testaments. It’s unusual for a capitalist enterprise in the Godless Northeast, but the impact can be profound.

When he quite unexpectedly began to edit stories (he does not edit columns, for they tend to be perfect) with a quill pen, and the writers expressed some surprise, he read from Isaiah 43:19: “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?”

When I on occasion attribute odd motives to politicians engaged in problematic behavior, the editor often asks to be reassured that I know of what I speak. I reassure him, at which points he turns to III John 4 and reads, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.”

When the staff at the paper occasionally complains that I’m teacher’s pet; that I’m the editor’s favorite writer, he calms them by turning to Proverbs 16:7, “When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.”

You can understand the power of this kind of management tool. The next time your boss starts to quote from a human resources memo, you should hand him a Bible and tell him to get right with the Lord.

Of course, what really makes the editor’s approach so powerful isn’t only the choice of prose, but the very act of holding up the Bible and waving it in an authoritative manner as he speaks. It’s real. It’s substantive. It’s, well, you know, a book.

Which brings us to the subject of today’s sermon: What in the world is going on at Cushing Academy?

The Discard Pile

This reputable and formidable prep school in Worcester County has announced that it is casting out all books from its library, as if the volumes were in-house IT guys being replaced by a contractor in India. Why have dusty, crinkly, non-interactive old books, the school reasons, when the kids can go online and not only learn all there is to know, but also launch a nuclear missile attack, if they’re good with computer code.

School officials realize, of course, that such a “pedagogical and technological shift,” as they described it, will create some angst. They reassure all concerned that “many teachers continue to assign printed books in their courses, and students are encouraged to read literature in any format they find most convenient.”

That last part is important. As a student, I enjoyed reading “Moby Dick” very much, but, as even fans of Melville will concede, the stuff about whaling was tedious. But I read it. It was in the book. Online, to the beat of a flickering computer screen, I might have whisked right by it – and then where would I be? As adrift as an angel investor who scans the good news, but avoids the small-print warnings about the frailty of “forward-looking statements.”

To reassure myself that I was not alone in my discomfort with the Cushing Academy library cleansing, I turned to the current issue of “The New Criterion,” an articulate arts-and-literature journal that tilts toward the suspicious on matters of new-fangled modernism in all its Decline and Fall of the West variations.

And there it was, in a brief opinion note: “Where is Cushing’s Board of Trustees? Don’t they realize what a disaster this shortsighted capitulation to trendiness is for the school?”

Quite apart from the Cushing conundrum is the general sense that old coots must race to their local libraries and chain themselves to the doors, before the last book is gone. Writing in the Autumn issue of Wilson Quarterly, Christine Rosen, a senior editor of The New Atlantis journal, warns that “the image-driven world of the screen dominates our attention at the same time that it contributes to a kind of experience pollution that is challenging our ability to engage with the printed word.”

The editor of Wilson Quarterly, writing of the future of books, suggested that “increasingly, the printed word will be a luxury product for a select audience.”

Oh. A select audience. Like prep school graduates.

The Teller doesn’t know if you’ve heard, but Generation Y is different. They’re special, and they need to be treated differently in the workplace. They understand this whole Internets thing far better than we old dogs. They can text message at 90 words per minute … on a traditional phone keypad (which is sooooo 2005).

Just to be sure who the heck Gen Y is, The Teller looked it up on Wikipedia. Gen Y refers to anyone born between 1983 and 2001, according to a variety of sources.

And apparently, Gen Y needs a new way to bank. At least, that’s what the creative types down at Plastyc Inc. think, and that’s why they’ve created iBankUP. (Apparently they don’t need traditional spellings, syntax, or punctuation … but we digress.)

iBankUP is a pre-paid Visa card, with an online checking and direct deposit component. We know, we know, it sounds a lot like a debit card, but just wait. You can check your balances in real time with a mobile phone or Facebook account, use it to withdraw money from an ATM (for a fee), and doesn’t require a credit check to sign up. Yes, it still sounds like a debit card, but hold on, stay with us.

You can add money at more than 60,000 retailers nationwide, specifically places like Wal-Mart, Rite Aid, Target and the like. Ahh, now we get it: It’s like reverse cash back, right?

Not exactly. In order to load cash onto your account, you have to buy something called a Green Dot MoneyPak (again with the alternative spelling). You can load up to $1,000 onto a MoneyPak, for a $4.95 fee, and then go online and transfer the funds over.

There are no “overdraft” fees. But if you exceed your minimum balance, you have a “shortage fee” of $3. If you load fewer than $300 per month, there is a fee. Any phone inquiry for service questions carries a fee. If you want to loan money using a credit or debit card, there is a fee. Any balance inquiry from an ATM brings a fee.

Basically the only transaction that’s free is adding money to the card via direct deposit, or buying something.

See? It’s a totally new way of banking for Gen Y, without all the crazy and onerous fees banks charge! These are just new crazy and onerous fees! Let’s hope Gen Y is savvy enough to read all the fine print.