Chapter 2

Critical judgment is shown by some of the young people. One boy says: "I heard all the other boys saying it was a good library and that the books were better kept than in a majority of libraries." A girl says that friends "told her what nice books were in this library." In one case a boy's brother "told him he could get the best books here for his needs."

The combination of man and book seems to be very attractive. One child "saw a boy in school with a book, telling what a boy should know about electricity; I wanted to read that book and joined the library." Others "followed a crowd of little boys with books"; "saw children taking books out of the building and asked them about joining"; "saw a boy carrying books and asked if there was a library in the neighborhood." A woman "saw a child with a library book in the park and asked her for the address of the library." Sometimes the book alone does the work, as shown by the following laconic report: "Found a book in the park; took it to the library; joined it." A cause of sorrow to many librarians who have decided ideas regarding literature for children will be the report of a boy who exclaimed: "Horatio Alger did it!" On being asked to explain, he said that a friend had brought one of Alger's books to his house and that he was thereby attracted to the library.

Among those who were brought in by relatives are children who were first carried by their mothers to the library as infants and so grew naturally into its use. Sometimes the influence works upward instead of downward, for several adults report that their children brought them to the library or induced them to visit it. One man reports that he "got married and his wife induced him to come."

Some of the reasons given are curious. A few are unconnected with the use of books. One girl came to the library because "it was a very handy library"; another, because she "saw it was a nice place to come to on a rainy day." Still another frankly avows that "it was the fad among the boys and girls of our neighborhood; we used to meet at the library." A postman reported that he entered the library first in the line of his duty, but was attracted by it and began to take out books. A clergyman had his attention called to the library by requests from choir-boys that he should sign their application blanks; afterwards thinking that he might find books there for his own reading, he became a regular user. One user came first to the library to see an exhibition of pictures of old New York. A recent importation says: "When I came from Paris I found all my cousins speaking English; 'well,' they said, 'go to the library and take books'"--a process that doubtless did its share toward making an American of the new arrival. In another case, the Americanizing process has not yet reached the stage where the user's English is altogether intelligible. He says: "Because I like to read the book. I ask the bakery lady to my reference and I sing my neam" [sign my name?].

Here are some examples of recently acquired elegance in diction that are almost baboo-like in their hopelessness: "Because it interest about the countries that are far away. It gives knowledge to many of the people in this country." "So as to obtain knowledge from them and by reading books find out how the great men were in their former days and all about them and the world and its people." It will be seen that the last two writers were among those who misunderstood our questions and told why they read books rather than how they were first led to the use of a library.

These reports are far from possessing merely a passing interest for the curious. For the public librarian, whose wish it is to reach as large a proportion of the public as possible, they are full of valuable hints. They emphasize, for instance, the urgent necessity of winning the good will of the public, and they forcibly remind us that this is of more value in gaining a foothold for the library than columns of notices in the papers or thousands of circulars or cards distributed in the neighborhood. It is even more potent than a beautiful building. Attractive as this is, its value as an influence to secure new readers is vastly less than a reputation for hospitality and helpfulness.

In looking over the figures one rather disquieting thought cannot be kept down. If the good will of the public is so potent in increasing the use of the library, the ill will of the same public must be equally potent in the opposite direction. Some of those who are satisfied with us and our work are here put on record. How about the dissatisfied? A record of these might be even more interesting, for it would point out weaknesses to be strengthened and errors to be avoided--but that, as Kipling says, "is another story."

THE PASSING OF THE POSSESSIVE: A STUDY OF BOOK-TITLES

If there is one particular advantage possessed by the Teutonic over the Romance languages in idiomatic clearness and precision it is that conferred by their ownership of a possessive case, almost the sole remaining monument to the fact that our ancestors spoke an inflected tongue. That we should still be able to speak of "the baker's wife's dog" instead of "the dog of the wife of the baker" certainly should be regarded by English-speaking people as a precious birthright. Yet, there are increasing evidences of a tendency to discard this only remaining case-ending and to replace its powerful backbone with the comparatively limp and cartilaginous preposition. This tendency has not yet appeared so much in our spoken as in our written language, and even here only in the most formal parts of it. It is especially noticeable in the diction of the purely formal title and heading.

That the reader may have something beyond an unsupported assertion that this is the case, I purpose to offer in evidence the titles of some recent works of fiction, and to make a brief statistical study of them.

The titles were taken from the adult fiction lists in the Monthly Bulletins of the New York Free Circulating Library from November, 1895, to March, 1897, inclusive, and are all such titles as contain a possessive, whether expressed by the possessive case or by the preposition "of" with the objective. Some titles are included in which the grammatical relation is slightly different, but all admit the alternative of the case-ending "'s" or "of" followed by the objective case.

Of the 101 titles thus selected, 41 use the possessive case and 60 the objective with the preposition. This proportion is in itself sufficiently suggestive, but it becomes still more so by comparing it with the corresponding proportion among a different set of titles. For this purpose 101 fiction titles were selected, just as they appeared in alphabetical order, from a library catalogue bearing the date 1889; only those being taken, as before, that contain a possessive. Of these 101, 71 use the possessive case and 30 the objective with "of." In other words, where eight years ago nearly three-quarters of such titles used the possessive case, now only two-fifths use it, a proportionate reduction of nearly one-half.

The change appears still more striking when we study the titles a little more closely. Of those in the earlier series there is not one that is not good, idiomatic English as it stands, whichever form is used; we may even say that there is not one that would not be made less idiomatic by a change to the alternative form. Among the recent titles, however, while the forms using the possessive case are all better as they are, of the 60 titles that use the objective with "of" only 22 would be injured by a change, and the reason why 8 of these are better as they are is simply that change would destroy euphony. Among these eight are

"The Indiscretion of the Duchess," "The Flight of a Shadow," "The Secret of Narcisse," etc.,

where the more idiomatic forms,

"The Duchess's Indiscretion," "Narcisse's Secret," "A Shadow's Flight," etc.,

are certainly not euphonic.

Of the others, 8 would not be injured by a change, and no less than 30 would be improved from the standpoint of idiomatic English. It may be well to quote these thirty titles. They are:

"The Shadow of Hilton Fernbrook," "The Statement of Stella Maberly," "The Shadow of John Wallace," "The Banishment of Jessop Blythe," "The Desire of the Moth," "The Island of Dr. Moreau," "The Damnation of Theron Ware," "The Courtship of Morrice Buckler," "The Daughter of a Stoic," "The Lament of Dives," "The Heart of Princess Osra," "The Death of the Lion," "The Vengeance of James Vansittart," "The Wife of a Vain Man," "The Crime of Henry Vane," "The Son of Old Harry," "The Honour of Savelli," "The Life of Nancy," "The Story of Lawrence Garthe," "The Marriage of Esther," "The House of Martha," "Tales of an Engineer," "Love-letters of a Worldly Woman," "The Way of a Maid," "The Soul of Pierre," "The Day of Their Wedding," "The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard," "The Hand of Ethelberta," "The Failure of Sibyl Fletcher," "The Love-affairs of an Old Maid."

Of course, in such a division as this, much must depend on individual judgment and bias. Probably no two persons would divide the list in just the same way, but it is my belief that the general result in each case would be much the same. To me the possessive in every one of the above-quoted titles would have been more idiomatic, thus:

"Hilton Fernbrook's Shadow," "Stella Maberly's Statement," "John Wallace's Shadow," "Morrice Buckler's Courtship," "A Stoic's Daughter," "Henry Vane's Crime," etc., etc.

In one case, at least, this fact has been recognized by a publisher, for "The Vengeance of James Vansittart," whose title is included in the list given above, has appeared in a later edition as "James Vansittart's Vengeance"--a palpable improvement.

I shall not discuss the cause of this change in the use of the possessive, though it seems to me an evident Gallicism, nor shall I open the question of whether it is a mere passing fad or the beginning of an actual alteration in the language. However this may be, it seems undeniable that there is an actual and considerable difference in the use of the possessive to-day and its use ten years ago, at least in formal titles and headings. I have confined myself to book-titles, because that is the department where the tendency presents itself to me most clearly; but it may be seen on street signs, in advertisements, and in newspaper headings. It is not to be found yet in the spoken language, at least it is not noticeable there, but it would be decidedly unsafe to prophesy that it will never appear there. Ten years from now we may hear about "the breaking of the arm of John Smith" and "the hat of Tom," without a thought that these phrases have not been part of our idiomatic speech since Shakespeare's time.

SELECTIVE EDUCATION[1]

[1] Read before the Schoolmen of New York.

Since Darwin called attention to the role of what he named "natural selection" in the genesis and preservation of species, and since his successors, both followers and opponents, have added to this many other kinds of selection that are continually operative, it has become increasingly evident that from one standpoint we may look on the sum of natural processes, organic and inorganic, as a vast selective system, as the result of which things are as they are, whether the results are the positions of celestial bodies or the relative places of human beings in the intellectual or social scale. The exact constitution of the present population of New York is the result of a great number of selective acts, some regular, others more or less haphazard. Selection is no less selection because it occurs by what we call chance--for chance is only our name for the totality of trivial and unconsidered causes. When, however, we count man and man's efforts in the sum of natural objects and forces, we have to reckon with his intelligence in these selective processes. I desire to call attention to the place that they play in educative systems and in particular to the way in which they may be furthered or made more effective by books, especially by public collections of books.

When we think of any kind of training as it affects the individual, we most naturally regard it as changing that individual, as making him more fit, either for life in general or for some special form of life's activities. But when we think of it as affecting a whole community or a whole nation, we may regard it as essentially a selective process. In a given community it is not only desirable that a certain number of men should be trained to do a specified kind of work, but it is even more desirable that these should be the men that are best fitted to do this work. When Mr. Luther Burbank brings into play the selection by means of which he achieves his remarkable results in plant breeding he gets rid of the unfit by destruction, and as all are unfit for the moment that do not advance the special end that he has in view, he burns up plants--new and interesting varieties perhaps--by the hundred thousand. We cannot destroy the unfit, nor do we desire to do so, for from the educational point of view unfitness is merely bad adjustment. There is a place for every man in the world and it is the educator's business to see that he reaches it, if not by formative, then by selective processes. This selection is badly made in our present state of civilization. It depends to a large extent upon circumstances remote from the training itself--upon caprice, either that of the person to be trained or of his parents, upon accidents of birth or situation, upon a thousand irrelevant things; but in every case there are elements present in the training itself that aid in determining it. A young man begins to study medicine, and he finds that his physical repulsion for work in the dissecting-room can not be overcome. He abandons the study and by doing so eliminates an unfit person. A boy who has no head for figures enters a business college. He can not get his diploma, and the community is spared one bad bookkeeper. Certainly in some instances, possibly in all, technical and professional schools that are noted for the excellence of their product are superior not so much because they have better methods of training, but because their material is of better quality, owing to selection exercised either purposely, or automatically, or perhaps by some chance. The same is true of colleges. Of two institutions with the same curriculum and equally able instructors, the one with the widest reputation will turn out the best graduates because it attracts abler men from a wider field. This is true even in such a department as athletics. To him that hath shall be given. This is purely an automatic selective effect.

It would appear desirable to dwell more upon selective features in educational training, to ascertain what they are in each case and how they work, and to control and dispose them with more systematic care. Different minds will always attach different degrees of importance to natural and acquired fitness, but probably all will agree that training bestowed upon the absolutely unfit is worse than useless, and that there are persons whose natural aptitudes are so great that upon them a minimum of training will produce a maximum effect. Such selective features as our present educational processes possess, the examination, for instance, are mostly exclusive; they aim to bar out the unfit rather than to attract the fit. Here is a feature on which some attention may well be fixt.

How do these considerations affect the subject of general education? Are we to affirm that arithmetic is only for the born mathematician and Latin for the born linguist, and endeavor to ascertain who these may be? Not so; for here we are training not experts but citizens. Discrimination here must be not in the quality but in the quantity of training. We may divide the members of any community into classes according as their formal education--their school and college training--has lasted one, two, three, four, or more years. There has been a selection here, but it has operated, in general, even more imperfectly than in the case of special training. Persons who are mentally qualified to continue their schooling to the end of a college course, and who by so doing would become more useful members of the community, are obliged to be content with two or three years in the lower grades, while others, who are unfitted for the university, are kept at it until they take, or fail to take, the bachelor's degree. An ideal state of things, of course, would be to give each person the amount of general education for which he is fitted and then stop. This would be difficult of realization even if financial considerations did not so often interfere. But at least we may keep in view the desirability of preventing too many misfits and of insisting, so far as possible, on any selective features that we may discover in present systems.

For instance, a powerful selective feature is the attractiveness of a given course of study to those who are desired to pursue it. If we can find a way, for example, to make our high school courses attractive to those who are qualified to take them, while at the same time rendering them very distasteful to those who are not so qualified, we shall evidently have taken a step in the right direction. It is clear that both parts of this prescription must be taken together or there is no true selection. Much has been done of late years toward making educational courses of all kinds interesting and attractive, but it is to be feared that their attractiveness has been such as to appeal to the unfit as well as to the fit. If we sugar-coat our pills indiscriminately and mix them with candy, many will partake who need another kind of medicine altogether. We must so arrange things that the fit will like while the unfit dislike, and for this purpose the less sugar-coating the better. This is no easy problem and it is intended merely to indicate it here, not to propose a general solution.

The one thing to which attention should be directed is the role that may be and is played by the printed book in selective education. There is more or less effort to discredit books as educative tools and to lay emphasis on oral instruction and manual training. We need not decry these, but, it must be remembered that after all the book contains the record of man's progress; we may tell how to do a thing, and show how to do it, but we shall never do it in a better way or explain the why and wherefore, and surely transmit that ability and that explanation to posterity, without the aid of a stable record of some kind. If we are sure that our students could and would pick out only what they needed, as a wild animal picks his food in the woods, we might go far toward solving our problem, by simply turning them loose in a collection of books. Some people have minds that qualify them to profit by such "browsing," and some of these have practically educated themselves in a library. Even in the more common cases where formal training is absolutely necessary, access to other books than text-books is an aid to selection both qualitative and quantitative. Books may serve as samples. To take an extreme case, a boy who had no knowledge whatever of the nature of law or medicine would certainly not be competent to choose between them in selecting a profession, and a month spent in a library where there were books on both subjects would certainly operate to lessen his incompetence. Probably it would not be rash to assert that with free access to books, under proper guidance, both before and during a course of training, the persons who begin that course will include more of the fit and those who finish it will include less of the unfit, than without such access.

Let us consider one or two concrete examples. A college boy has the choice of several different courses. He knows little of them, but thinks that one will meet his needs. He elects it and finds too late that he is wasting his time. Another boy, whose general reading has been sufficient to give him some superficial knowledge of the subject-matter in all the courses, sees clearly which will benefit him, and profits by that knowledge.

Again, a boy, full of the possibilities that would lead him to appreciate the best in literature, has gained his knowledge of it from a teacher who looks upon a literary masterpiece only as something to be dissected. The student has been disgusted instead of inspired, and his whole life has been deprived of one of the purest and most uplifting of all influences. Had he been brought up in a library where he could make literary friends and develop literary enthusiasms, his course with the dry as dust teacher would have been only an unpleasant incident, instead of the wrecking of a part of his intellectual life.

Still again, a boy on a farm has vague aspirations. He knows that he wants a broader horizon, to get away from his cramped environment--that is about all. How many boys, impelled by such feelings, have gone out into the world with no clear idea of what they are fitted to do, or even what they really desire! To how many others has the companionship of a few books meant the opening of a peep-hole, thru which, dimly perhaps, but none the less really, have been descried definite possibilities, needs, and opportunities!

To all of these youths books have been selective aids merely--they have added little or nothing to the actual training whose extent and character they have served to point out. Such cases, which it would be easy to multiply, illustrate the value of books in the selective functions of training. To assert that they exercise such a function is only another way of saying that a mind orients itself by the widest contact with other minds. There are other ways of assuring this contact, and these should not be neglected; but only thru books can it approach universality both in space and in time. How else could we know exactly what Homer and St. Augustine and Descartes thought and what Tolstoi and Lord Kelvin and William James, we will say, are even now thinking?

It has scarcely been necessary to say all this to convince you of the value of books as aids to education; but it is certainly interesting to find that in an examination of the selective processes in education, we meet with our old friends in such an important role.