Chapter XV, Vol. II of the "Life," and get a further idea of

Ticknor's zeal in promoting the Boston library and his interest in making it as popular as possible, in distinction to the idea of a library solely for scholars, upheld by John Jacob Astor, in his New York gift of three years previous, which Everett rather favored.

George Ticknor was born in Boston, Aug. 1, 1791 and graduated at Dartmouth in 1807. He was admitted to the bar in 1813 but devoted his life chiefly to teaching and to literature, serving as professor in Harvard in 1819-35. He died in Boston, Jan. 26, 1871. A sketch of Everett appears on page 127 of this volume.

The endowment of a great library in New York, given by Mr. John Jacob Astor, at his death, in 1848, was much talked about; and men of forecast began to say openly that, unless something of a like character were done in Boston, the scientific and literary culture of this part of the country would follow trade and capital to the metropolis, which was thus taking the lead. Still, nothing effectual was done. Among the persons with whom Mr. Ticknor had, of late years, most frequently talked of the matter, Dr. Channing was dead, Mr. Abbott Lawrence had become Minister to England, and Mr. Jonathan Phillips was growing too infirm to take part in public affairs. The subject, however, kept its hold on Mr. Ticknor's mind.

His idea was that which he felt lay at the foundation of all our public institutions, namely, that in order to form and maintain our character as a great nation, the mass of the people must be intelligent enough to manage their own government with wisdom; and he came, though not at once, to the conclusion that a very free use of books, furnished by an institution supported at the expense of the community, would be one of the effective means for obtaining this result of general culture.

He had reached this conclusion before he saw any probability of its being practically carried out, as is proved by the following letter, which he wrote to Mr. Everett, in the summer of 1851. A few months before this date Mr. Everett had presented to the city--after offering it in vain more than once--a collection of about a thousand volumes of Public Documents, and books of similar character, accompanied by a letter, urging the establishment of a public library.

To HON. EDWARD EVERETT.

Bellows Falls, Vermont, July 14, 1851.

MY DEAR EVERETT,--I have seen with much gratification from time to time, within the last year, and particularly in your last letter on the subject, that you interest yourself in the establishment of a public library in Boston;--I mean a library open to all the citizens, and from which all, under proper restrictions, can take out books. Such, at least, I understand to be your plan; and I have thought, more than once, that I would talk with you about it, but accident has prevented it. However, perhaps a letter is as good on all accounts, and better as a distinct memorandum of what I mean.

It has seemed to me, for many years, that such a free public library, if adapted to the wants of our people, would be the crowning glory of our public schools. But I think it important that it should be adapted to our peculiar character; that is, that it should come in at the end of our system of free instruction, and be fitted to continue and increase the effects of that system by the self-culture that results from reading.

The great obstacle to this with us is not--as it is in Prussia and elsewhere--a low condition of the mass of the people, condemning them, as soon as they escape from school, and often before it, to such severe labor, in order to procure the coarsest means of physical subsistence, that they have no leisure for intellectual culture, and soon lose all taste for it. Our difficulty is, to furnish means specially fitted to encourage a love for reading, to create an appetite for it, which the schools often fail to do, and then to adapt these means to its gratification. That an appetite for reading can be very widely excited is plain, from what the cheap publications of the last twenty years have accomplished, gradually raising the taste from such poor trash as the novels with which they began, up to the excellent and valuable works of all sorts which now flood the country, and are read by the middling classes everywhere, and in New England, I think, even by a majority of the people.[2]

Now what seems to me to be wanted in Boston is, an apparatus that shall carry this taste for reading as deep as possible into society, assuming, what I believe to be true, that it can be carried deeper in our society than in any other in the world, because we are better fitted for it. To do this I would establish a library which, in its _main_ department and purpose, should differ from all free libraries yet attempted; I mean one in which any popular books, tending to moral and intellectual improvement, should be furnished in such numbers of copies that many persons, if they desired it, could be reading the same work at the same time; in short, that not only the best books of all sorts, but the pleasant literature of the day, should be made accessible to the whole people at the only time when they care for it, _i.e._ when it is fresh and new. I would, therefore, continue to buy additional copies of any book of this class, almost as long as they should continue to be asked for, and thus, by following the popular taste,--unless it should demand something injurious,--create a real appetite for healthy general reading. This appetite, once formed, will take care of itself. It will, in the great majority of cases, demand better and better books; and can, I believe, by a little judicious help, rather than by any direct control or restraint, be carried much higher than is generally thought possible.

[2] Mr. Ticknor was much struck by the publication of a cheap edition of Johns' Translation of Froissart, by the Harpers, of which he found a copy in a small inn of a retired village of southern New York, in 1844; and he always watched the signs of popular taste, both in publishers' lists and in the bookshelves of the houses which he entered, in his summer journeys, or in his errands of business and charity in the winter.

After some details, of no present consequence, developing this idea, the letter goes on:--

Nor would I, on this plan, neglect the establishment of a department for consultation, and for all the common purposes of public libraries, some of whose books, like encyclopaedias and dictionaries, should never be lent out, while others could be permitted to circulate; all on the shelves being accessible for reference as many hours in the day as possible, and always in the evening. This part of the library, I should hope, would be much increased by donations from public-spirited individuals, and individuals interested in the progress of knowledge, while, I think, the public treasury should provide for the more popular department.

Intimations of the want of such public facilities for reading are, I think, beginning to be given. In London I notice advertisements of some of the larger circulating libraries, that they purchase one and two hundred copies of all new and popular works; and in Boston, I am told, some of our own circulating libraries will purchase almost any new book, if the person asking for it will agree to pay double the usual fee for reading it; while in all, I think, several, and sometimes many copies of new and popular works are kept on hand for a time, and then sold, as the demand for them dies away.

Omitting other details, now of no importance, the letter ends as follows:--

Several years ago I proposed to Mr. Abbott Lawrence to move in favor of such a library in Boston; and, since that time, I have occasionally suggested it to other persons. In every case the idea has been well received; and the more I have thought of it and talked about it, the more I have been persuaded, that it is a plan easy to be reduced to practice, and one that would be followed by valuable results.

I wish, therefore, that you would consider it, and see what objections there are to it. I have no purpose to do anything more about it myself than to write you this letter, and continue to speak of it, as I have done heretofore, to persons who, like yourself, are interested in such matters. But I should be well pleased to know how it strikes you.

To this letter Mr. Everett replied as follows:--

CAMBRIDGE, July 26, 1851.

MY DEAR TICKNOR,--I duly received your letter of the 14th from Bellows Falls, and read it with great interest.

The extensive circulation of new and popular works is a feature of a public library which I have not hitherto much contemplated. It deserves to be well weighed, and I shall be happy hereafter to confer with you on the subject. I cannot deny that my views have, since my younger days, undergone some change as to the practicability of freely loaning books at home from large public libraries. Those who have been connected with the administration of such libraries are apt to get discouraged, by the loss and damage resulting from the loan of books. My present impressions are in favor of making the amplest provision in the library for the use of books there.

Your plan, however, is intended to apply only to a particular class of books, and does not contemplate the unrestrained circulation of those of which the loss could not be easily replaced.

That Boston must have a great public library, or yield to New York in letters as well as in commerce, will, I think, be made quite apparent in a few years. But on this and other similar subjects I hope to have many opportunities of conferring with you next winter.

The difference of opinion, here made evident, as to the possibility or safety of allowing books to circulate freely, was not removed by many subsequent conversations, nor were the hopes of either of the gentlemen, with regard to the establishment of a great library, raised even when, in the early part of 1852, the mayor, Mr. Seaver, recommended that steps be taken for such an object, and the Common Council, presided over by Mr. James Lawrence, proposed that a board of trustees for such an institution should be appointed. When, therefore, both Mr. Everett and Mr. Ticknor--the latter greatly to his surprise--were invited to become members of this board, they conferred together anew on the project; and, although the mayor, on hearing Mr. Ticknor's views, was much pleased with them, and urged him to take the place, yet he at one time determined to decline the office, certainly unless the library were to be open for the free circulation of most of its books, and unless it were to be dedicated, in the first instance, rather to satisfying the wants of the less favored classes of the community, than--like all public libraries then in existence--to satisfying the wants of scholars, men of science, and cultivated men generally.

THE FUNCTION OF A TOWN LIBRARY

Nearly a quarter-century elapsed after Ticknor's letter, just quoted, before the publication in book form of Josiah P. Quincy's "Protection of Majorities and Other Essays" (Boston, 1875), of which collection his paper on the function of a town library forms a part. As stated in his introduction, it appeared originally in _Old and New_, a magazine already extinct when that introduction was penned.

While asserting as strongly as Mr. Ticknor his belief in making a library "popular," the writer denies that his belief justifies the inclusion of fiction. His position seems to be that, praiseworthy as much of it is, fiction should not be supplied to the public from the public funds. The present attitude, that this is a matter to be settled by the public itself, is repudiated in set terms and with somewhat picturesque illustrations, by Mr. Quincy. His stalwart advocacy of the library as a supplement to the school is what justifies the inclusion of his paper in this collection. Those who desire to follow Mr. Quincy a little farther may read the next paper in the above-named collection entitled "The Abuse of Reading."

Josiah Phillips Quincy was born in Boston, Nov. 28, 1829 and graduated at Harvard in 1850, the son of the statesman Josiah Quincy who was also president of Harvard. He was admitted to the bar in 1854, but afterward engaged in business and in farming, also writing freely on civic and economic subjects.

This is a one-sided paper. Something might be said on the other side; but, as that is the popular side, it is likely to receive full justice. In behalf of an unconverted minority, who should be represented through the press, if nowhere else, I desire to register a dissent from the prevailing opinion concerning the function of libraries sustained by the taxation of towns and small municipalities. The importance of stimulating thought upon subjects bearing ever so remotely upon our fiscal requirements, I conceive to be far greater than may superficially appear. For when the mass of our people clearly comprehend what government should not be called upon to do for them, they will insist upon its performing duties which are manifestly within its sphere of action. Laboring men and women are to-day suffering from the adulteration of their food and drink, and from a system of taxation which oppresses them with weighty and unjust burdens. Their deliverance can only come by dismissing legislators who are disciples of what may be called the Todgers school of economy; that remarkable matron, as Dickens tells us, caring little for the solid sustenance of her boarders, provided "the gravy" was abundant and satisfactory.

Upon what principle can the citizen, who thinks before he casts his ballot, justify himself in voting increased taxes upon his neighbors for the purpose of establishing a library? He must assume the necessity of public schools, and then argue that he may vote for a library that will supplement the elementary instruction which the town provides. And the justification is ample. If our schools are so conducted as to awaken a taste for knowledge and give a correct method in English reading, the town library may represent the university brought to every man's door. But suppose a large portion of the funds taken from tax-payers is devoted to circulating ephemeral works of mere amusement. Is it not as monstrous for me to vote to tax my neighbor to furnish the boys and girls with "A Terrible Tribulation," or "Lady So-and-So's Struggle," as it would be for the purpose of providing them with free tickets to witness "Article 47" or "The Black Crook"? These romances and dramas (to represent them in the most favorable point of view) are evanescent productions, designed to meet the market demand for the intense and spasmodic. Their claims to patronage from the public purse are precisely similar.

So far, the citizen has a right to object as a tax-payer. But, if he were truly solicitous for the welfare of the community about him, the protest might be far deeper. For the weak spot in our school system lies just here: while claiming immense credit for giving most of our children the ability to read, we show the profoundest indifference about what they read. But this accomplishment of reading is a very doubtful good if it goes no farther than to give a boy the satisfaction of perusing "The Police Gazette," or introduces a girl to the immoralities of Mr. Griffith Gaunt, and the adventures of a hundred other heroes of characters even more questionable. By teaching our children to read, and then setting them adrift in a sea of feverish literature which vitiates the taste and enervates the character, we show an indifference about as sensible as that of the old lady who thought it could not matter whether her son had gone to the bosom of Abraham or Beelzebub, seeing that they were both Scripture names.

It is not difficult to conceive of communities, existing in Greenland or elsewhere, which might legitimately tax the citizen to furnish his neighbors with their novel-reading. But it can scarcely be disputed that an increased facility for obtaining works of fiction is not the pressing need of our country in this present year of grace. Dr. Isaac Ray, perhaps our highest authority on morbid mental phenomena, concludes his study on the effects of the prevalent romantic literature in these words: "The specific doctrine I would inculcate is, that the excessive indulgence in novel-reading, which is a characteristic of our times, is chargeable with many of the mental irregularities that prevail among us in a degree unknown at any former period." The late Dr. Forbes Winslow, a physician of similar note in England, used still stronger language in describing how fearfully and fatally suggestive to the minds of the young are those artistically developed records of sin which form the staple of the popular novel. In these days of disordered nerve centres, and commissions to inquire into every thing, we neglect much valuable information which lies upon the surface. It is well to bear in mind that our eminent bibliographer, Mr. Spofford, has informed us that "masses of novels and other ephemeral publications overload most of our popular libraries"; and that our wisest physicians have agreed as to the influence they exert.

Of course these views will be met by a brusque statement that town libraries must supply such books as people want, and that they demand the current novels in unlimited quantities. But I repudiate the dismal fallacy upon which such an argument is based. Plum-cake and champagne would doubtless be demanded at a Sunday-school picnic, were these delicacies placed upon the table; but, if the committee did not think it necessary to supply them from the parish funds, is it certain that a fair amount of cold beef and hasty-pudding would not be consumed in their stead? And if a heartless man-government declined to furnish Maggie and Mollie with "The Pirate's Penance" or "The Bride's Bigamy" for their Sabbath reading, is it not possible that those fair voters of the future might substitute Mrs. Fawcett's interesting illustrations of political economy, or some outline of human physiology, their knowledge of which would bless an unborn generation?

I do not advocate the absurdity of a town library which should chiefly consist of authors like Plato and Professor Peirce. No one can doubt that the great majority of its volumes should be emphatically _popular_ in their character. They should furnish intelligible and interesting reading to the average graduate of the town schools. And there is no lack of such works. The outlines of physical and social science have been written by men of genius in simple and attractive style. History and biography in the hands of their masters give a healthy stimulus to the imagination, and tend to strengthen the character. The function of a town library should be to supply reading improving and interesting, and yet, in the best sense of the word, popular; and I maintain that this can be done, without setting up a rival agency to the news-stand, the book-club, and the weekly paper, for the circulation of the novels of the day.

There is a saying of Dr. Johnson, to the effect, that, if a boy be let loose in a library, he is likely to give himself a very fair education. But, in accepting this dictum, we must remember the sort of library the doctor had in his mind. As known to him, it was based upon solid volumes of systematized information. Besides these were the noblest poems of the world, a very few great romances, and ponderous tomes of controversial theology; good, healthy food, and much of it attractive to an unpampered boy-appetite.

But the range of a large library is by no means necessary to produce the soundest educational results. Can it be doubted that familiar knowledge of a small case of well-selected books--such, for instance, as the modest stipend of a country clergyman easily collects--is better for boy and girl than the liberty of devouring a thousand highly-flavored sweets in the free library? At all events, a few old-fashioned people do not question it. "A year ago," writes one of them, "Alice used to read Irving and Spenser, and Tom was dipping into Gibbon and Shakespeare; liking them well enough, yet preferring a game of base-ball to either, as it was proper he should. But the town library was opened, and these young people are found crouching over novels in out-of-the-way corners, when they ought to be at play; or reading surreptitiously at night, when they ought to be asleep." It is in vain to throw all the responsibility upon parents. American parents are very busy, and somewhat careless. Mrs. Fanny Firefly's highly-seasoned love-stories for girls, and Mr. Samuel Sensation's boy-novels and spiced preparations of boned history, are got up, like the port-wine drops of the confectioners, to tempt and to sell. And they do their work. No one can examine the average boy and girl of the period without being struck with their ignorance of the great works of English literature which young people of a former generation were accustomed to read with profit and delight.

The function of a town library is to supplement the town schools; to gratify the taste for knowledge which they should have imparted; and to serve as an instrument for that self-education to which there is no limit. But tax-payers are not bound to circulate twenty-seven thousand novels against nineteen hundred volumes of biography and seventeen hundred of history, according to the figures of one report; or to expend two-thirds of the working force of their establishment in sending out "novels and juveniles," according to the statement of another. In a word, information, not excitement, should be imbibed from the atmosphere of the town library. That prevailing infirmity of our time which seems to substitute sensibility for morality should there find small encouragement. But we shall never know what this institution might do for a community, so long as the temptation of free novels is thrust in the faces of all who enter. For it is not to be expected that our youth fresh from school, moving among the countless agitations of American life, will select reading that may require some mental exertion, so long as mental excitement is offered them in unlimited amounts.

I am well aware how much may be said for the story-tellers, and how many people there are to say it; and, whenever there is danger of their being unduly neglected, my voice shall be loudly raised in their behalf. But one may allow the claims of the romances, from Scheherazade to Mrs. Southworth, and yet maintain that the theory upon which the average town library is run is faulty. There is no virtue in despising cakes and ale, and the heat of ginger in the mouth may at times impart a wholesome glow to the entire system. But it does not quite follow that it is the function of American towns to supply these stimulants gratis, at the expense of their tax-payers. While we consider the immense amount of reading of a certain sort that a town library supplies, it is well to remember that there are other sorts of reading it may possibly prevent. For it may encourage reading precisely as prodigality encourages industry. Luxury and profusion do indeed feed industry, and demoralize it; but the industry which serves God by blessing man, they prevent from being fed. I fear that in these days more noble capacities die of a surfeit from too much poor reading, than starve from want of good books. The valid defence of institutions working in the interest of State education is this: they prevent a waste of power. When any one of them can be shown to encourage waste of power, it needs looking after. In our complex social condition, the real consequences of any government interference extend far beyond its apparent consequences. An institution may be very useful up to a certain point, and yet hurtful if allowed to run its full course without restraining criticism.

The managers of our smaller libraries are apt to be picked men, who give unrequited labor and intelligence to their trust. But they are chosen at town meetings,--and to a certain extent must carry out the wishes of their electors. Upon this matter, as upon most others, it is the duty of the thoughtful men and women to create a wholesome public opinion. They must recognize the fact that the change from a few good books to an unlimited supply of all sorts of books is by no means an unmixed advantage to a community. While the results of town libraries, taken in the aggregate, are undoubtedly good, it is our duty to consider whether they ought not to be better.

THE FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY

The public library had now passed the period of the merely academic advocacy exemplified in the Ticknor letter of 1851. It was an actual, functioning institution, and as such was called upon to answer criticism and to justify its existence. The atmosphere of apologetics begins to appear in what its friends have to say about it. This is evident in the extract from Col. Higginson's "Men and Women" (New York, 1888) which immediately follows. The author's comparison of the evolution of a library with that of a great railroad system is perhaps the first hint of a comprehensive vision of the library as something bigger than any individual town or city institution and beyond it.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson was born in Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 22, 1823, and graduated at Harvard in 1841. He entered the ministry in 1847 but retired in 1858 and served in the Civil War. From that time until his death, May 9, 1911, he devoted himself to literature, publishing a large number of books.

Just as there is a good deal of anxiety wasted in regard to our free public schools, especially on the part of those who have never entered them, so there is some misplaced solicitude in regard to our libraries. The free town or city library is one of the few things in our democratic society that would have pleased the splenetic Carlyle, who mourned in one of his early letters that every village in England had its jail, but none its open library. It is a pity, therefore, when a man of high standing and great influence writes of these institutions thus hastily (I take the passage from a well-known literary journal): "Among the forms of beneficence for which our own generation has been conspicuous is the Free Library.... But it is, I apprehend, no exaggeration to say that such well-meant generosity has _oftener than otherwise_ (the italics are my own) been chilled and discouraged by its results. Appreciative readers are few, the best books are largely let alone, and the cost of the 'plant' and the taste which are put into it are often in most painful contrast to the appreciation which they have received." Now, while every count of this last sentence may be true indictment, it is easy to show how little it sustains the verdict. "Appreciative readers" are few in the most cultivated circles, if their appreciation must be tested by "the best books" only. It is not easy even to know what the best books are, if we may judge by the tiresome failures in making out the list of them; and suppose that they were known, do we find many clergymen or bishops who habitually read Plato, Aeschylus, and Dante, rather than "Ben-Hur" or "The lady or the tiger"? It does not therefore follow that people are unworthy of public libraries because "the best books are largely let alone"; the question is whether even the second best may not be good reading. We have the medical authority of Hippocrates for saying that the second best medicine may be better than the best, if the patient likes it best. So in regard to the fine buildings, the success of republican government happily does not depend on how far our citizens appreciate the architecture of the Capitol at Washington and the State House at Albany; and it is surely the same with libraries. Grant a few over-fine library buildings, built to please some private benefactor; grant a few mismanaged public libraries--though where these buildings or these libraries are I do not myself know--does the kindly writer of these lines mean to be understood as saying that "oftener than otherwise" our free public libraries are failures?

If he does, it can only be said that this remark adds another to the innumerable illustrations of that invaluable remark of Coleridge that we must take every man's testimony to the value of that which he does not know. All experience shows how easy it is to construct an institution out of one's own consciousness and then condemn it; we see this daily in what is written of our public school system. In General Butler's brief career as Governor of Massachusetts he made a severe attack upon the Normal Art School in Boston, and cited a pathetic instance of a fallen girl who undoubtedly (as he urged) received her first demoralization from the study of the nude in that school. It turned out on investigation that he himself had never entered the school, and that the young girl herself made no such charges; that there never had been any studying from nude models in the school; that she had attended it but a month or two, and this in its early days, when it did not possess so much as a plaster cast of a human foot or hand. No matter; the charge was reiterated up to the very end of His Excellency's career in office, and is believed by many worthy people of this day. It is equally easy to bring general charges against public libraries, and equally hard to remove their impression, however unjust and even cruel they may be.

What are the facts? There has just been a great Librarians' Convention assembled from all parts of the country, and keeping together for many days. Did a single speaker at that Convention take the ground that "oftener than otherwise" the benefactors of public libraries were chilled and discouraged? On the contrary, it was reported that such benefactors were never so active, and their benefactions were never so large. The tone was not one of discouragement, but of buoyancy and hope. Every one admitted the vastness of the educational engine created by the free library system; every one had his own suggestion by way of improvement or development, but every one expressed a cordial faith in the community, and reported encouragement in all work well done. The simple truth is that the creation of a system of such libraries is like the creation of a great railway system; it must be an evolution, not a creation outright. The wisest librarian in America fifty years ago had no more conception of the free library system of to-day than had Benjamin Franklin of our postal methods; nor can any one now foresee what fifty years of development will do for either.

The truth is that every step in any great organization brings out new possibilities, new dangers, and new resources. Side by side with the perils of free libraries--as of too much light reading, and the absence of proper appreciation of the best things--there are evoked resources to meet these dangers.

Outside the library there come up the "association to promote study at home," and the vast Chautauqua "reading circles"--all these being essentially based on the free library system, and implying it for their full development. Inside the library there grow up such methods as those of Mr. S.S. Green, City Librarian of Worcester, Massachusetts, whose ways of making such an institution useful to all sorts and conditions of the people may take rank with Rowland Hill's improvements in postal service, as to their results on democratic civilization. He has succeeded in linking the library and the public schools so closely that he and the teachers acting in concurrence, indirectly control the reading of the whole generation that is growing up in that city. The details must be sought in his reports--as, for instance, one from the Library Journal of March, 1887, which is printed as a leaflet; but the essential thing in managing libraries, as in managing schools, is to have faith in the community in which one lives, and to believe that people do, as the Scripture has it, "covet earnestly the best gifts," if you will only show them how those best gifts are to be obtained. Put into school and library methods one-half the organizing ability brought to bear on railways and telegraphs, and we shall stand astonished at the results within our reach. Those already attained, if fairly looked at, are sufficient to encourage any one. The writer has at two different times and in two different States been a director in these institutions. Whenever he needed a little stimulus toward doing his duty it was his custom to go and look over the rack containing the books lately brought back by readers. With all necessary deduction for the love of fiction--a love shared in these days by the wisest and best--the proportion of sensible and useful reading was always such as to vindicate the immense value of the free public libraries.

TWO FUNDAMENTALS

Mary Salome Cutler, now Mrs. Milton Fairchild, is the first librarian to be quoted in this symposium. A sketch of her appears in Vol. II. of this series. In the paragraphs quoted below which form part of a paper read by Miss Cutler, then vice-director of the New York State Library School, before the Pennsylvania Library Club and printed in _The Library Journal_ (October, 1896), appears a definite recognition of the social character of the library's task. Her two fundamentals--organization and human feelings--are both decided elements in its socialization.

In considering library interests we do well, I think, not to confine ourselves to the limited range of library subjects.

That mysterious thing which we call society is growing more complex, every part more curiously intertwined with every other part, each human life bearing some relation to every other human life. Whether he will or no, it is literally true that "no man liveth to himself alone." If it were possible, then, as a part of this organism to discover some of the laws which govern the whole, we might come back to our special domain with an application of the laws which would have the force of freshness. I believe that we gain an insight into these controlling principles only by yielding to the tendency of solidarity, by opening ourselves to surrounding influences, by living the fullest life of which we are capable. I think I have seen the workings of two of these laws which have a close relation to each other. If I am right your experience will confirm mine, and we can together make the application to what concerns us most--the library interests of to-day.

In any undertaking results depend directly, and often largely, upon the perfection of organization. Organization implies a mind which can grasp the undertaking as a whole, follow it out, each step in detail, estimate the various factors, personal and impersonal, provide for unforeseen contingencies, and furnish the faith, the will-power, the personal magnetism, whatever you choose to call it, in such measure as is needed to carry it through. Such a mind sees the end at the beginning, and thinks of it as already done while to others it may seem far off and even impossible. Such thought, often the work of one mind, sometimes the result of cooperation, is behind every piece of accomplished work. Other elements may doubtless be essential, but there can be no adequate results without organization. And, making allowance for other elements, the perfection of results depends upon the perfection of organization....

For the reason of this tendency we have not far to seek. I believe it is found in the scientific spirit of the age, which is surely pervading every sphere of human thought and activity. The careful investigation of facts, the deduction of the law from the phenomena, the distrust of chance and the loyalty to the law deduced, all of which evidence the scientific spirit, mark alike the great financier, diplomatist, inventor, philanthropist.

In some undertakings organization alone will suffice. For example, making a machine, laying out a railroad, compiling a volume of statistics. In others there must needs come in what I will call the human element, the consideration of people, not in masses, but as individuals, that matchless, indescribable quality which we call human sympathy....

Illustrations might be multiplied in educational, religious, and philanthropic efforts where we work for the masses, and forget that each one of the mass is a human being with passions, sensibilities, aspirations like our own. This interest in the human being as such, which is a gift to some, can be cultivated, but it can never be simulated. The counterfeit always rings false. Joined to a good memory for names and faces, it gives a person a power which can hardly be estimated....

It seems to me that these two principles apply with tremendous and unusual force to the problems of the modern library. I will speak of the public library alone because it has a wider reach and a closer touch on life.

We will review in imagination the library situation in this country. We take up Mr. Flint's Statistics volume for 1893; we sum up 593 free libraries in the New England states, 520 in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, 285 in the Southern states, 758 in the Western states, a total of 2156 free libraries.

We recall our friends in the American Library Association, who constitute with some marked exceptions, who prefer to work alone, the high-water mark of the fraternity. As their names pass before us we take a measure of the men and women. We think of their libraries which we may have visited, or, better still, which we have used as readers. In some few cases we know the influence of these libraries in the town or city. Take it for all in all we find a body of hard-working men and women translating into practice noble ideals. As a result, the library is beginning to get a hold upon the community. But it is only a beginning and, compared with the possibilities, only a prophecy of what may and will be. Are not the failures in our work due to the lack of the best organization and the true human touch?

A librarian is appointed, let us say, to an important post. He has doubtless had experience in library work. He comes on to consult with the trustees. They vote to send him on a trip for getting ideas from other libraries. He probably has on his hands a beautiful building illy adapted to library work. He carries the plans with him, and spends most of the time with other members of the craft, in choosing the least of several evils in placing the reference-room, catalog, charging-desk, etc. He secures two or three assistants with training, experience, or both, and fills the minor places with local help chosen by examination or by luck or by personal favor. He learns in a general way the character of the town and selects books with that in view. If there are certain manufacturing interests or a particular foreign population, he makes large purchases in those lines. He decides on a system of classification, of cataloging, and on a method of charging. The books are rushed through the various processes, though all too slowly for an impatient public. In a few months at the latest the big educational plant begins to be utilized.

The circulation surprises the most sanguine, the average of fiction drops a little below the usual mark, good service is done at the information or reference desk by the enthusiastic man or woman having it in charge, work is begun with the schools, and a little fraction of teachers make the children know books because they know books themselves. The rest go through the motions. The bookworm fills his corner, the chronic grumbler has his little say, the usual number of prize questions are answered. The library becomes the very bread of life to those who are ready to receive it, and gives refreshment and suggestion and inspiration to many more. The profession approves. At the next A.L.A. meeting Mr. ---- is brought forward more prominently, and the wise ones say, "I always thought he was a rising man."

But only 20 per cent. of the population ever set foot within the library, and when a stranger asks the way within a block of the building, a fairly intelligent-looking workman does not appear to know there is such a thing as the public library.

In looking over the proceedings of the library association for the 18 years of its existence, we are struck by the evidences of industry and earnestness. There are papers and discussions on libraries and schools, access to the shelves, bookbinding, systems of classification, cataloging rules. The keynote is cooperation in securing, with an enthusiasm which amounts to missionary zeal, the best and most uniform methods, with special reference to mechanical devices. The very motto smacks of arithmetic and commerce. "The best reading for the largest number at the least cost." All this is good and proper in its place. Wise methods are essential to the best results. But we sought in vain all along the years for the philosophic insight which should grasp the higher motive of our profession and connect it with the great struggles of our modern life. After the Columbus year in the clearer air of the mountain-top, the word for which we were waiting came. I wish it were possible to stop right here and give you the papers of Mr. Larned and Mr. Brett, which were read at Lake Placid, as well as the discussion which followed. I must content myself by quoting Mr. Larned's last sentence: "Those of us who have faith in the future of democracy can only hold our faith fast by believing that the knowledge of the learned, the wisdom of the thoughtful, the conscience of the upright, will some day be common enough to prevail, always, over every factious folly and every mischievous movement that evil minds or ignorance can set astir. When that blessed time of victory shall have come, there will be many to share the glory of it; but none among them will rank rightly before those who have led and inspired the work of the public libraries."

This leads us to the first great need of the profession to-day, that the librarian should be in the noblest sense a large, man, that he should add to executive and business ability and technical knowledge a broad and generous culture in Matthew Arnold's sense of the word, "An inward spiritual activity, having for its character increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy." He must be an omnivorous reader, skimming many books, and knowing by instinct which books and which chapters and sentences to read carefully. He must study from books and in life the great industrial, social, and religious questions which stir our age. He must be a scholar without pedantry, a man of the world without indifference, a friend of the people without sentimentality.

There follows naturally the second necessity, that the librarian should be a careful student of his own town. He should know its history and topography, its social, political, business, literary, and ecclesiastical life. To this end he should have a personal acquaintance with the city officers, the party bosses, the labor leaders, members of the board of trade, manufacturers, leading women in society, with the clergy, with the school superintendent and the teachers, with those who shape the charitable organizations, with reporters, policemen, and reformers.

To what end? Broadly that he may catch the spirit of the civic life and relate the library to the whole as the organs to the body. Specifically, that he may reach the entire population through the natural leaders, that he may select books, establish branches, open up new avenues of communication between the library and the people.

The church may be aristocratic, industry, trade, and politics a war, the public school like the drinking-fountain, though planned for the many scorned by the few. I believe it is possible for a man with a broad and sympathetic knowledge of our age and an intimate knowledge of his own city, to make of the public library the one common meeting-place, the real focus of democratic ideas. The church and the school will reach this in the future, the library may achieve it to-day.

There is a third difficulty, which is a very real and palpable one. The librarian himself may have a fairly high ideal of the library which is shared by perhaps one or two assistants. The bulk of the work in a library with a large circulation is done by young persons of less opportunity and training. Each has a distinct part of the work to do with little idea of its relation to the whole. Unfortunately the loan-desk, registration-desk, and reading-room are usually manned in this way. I have often stood amazed at the delivery-desk of librarians whose names represent all that is best in the library profession. I would not be understood as depreciating the work of the lower assistants in our libraries. I know well that this service, as a whole, represents an amount of faithfulness and devotion which it ill becomes me to undervalue. The responsibility lies with the head of the library and the failure comes from lack of organization. The appointing power should be practically in his hands. The man whom we have described above does not need to seek this power. It comes to him. It is surely possible to secure for the library service young men and women, boys and girls, of fair intelligence, quick wits, responsive minds, and human sympathies. The making of these units into an organism is the severest test of a librarian's power. The ability of a general is not enough. He must himself have the real human touch or he cannot call it forth from others. There must be the promptness, the accuracy, the despatch which marks military discipline; there must be also an intelligent conception of the purpose of the library, a strong sense of personal responsibility and of the dignity and beauty of the public service. It is sometimes said that spirit of the library should be that of a merchant and his well-trained clerks, anxious to please their customers. It should be rather the fine spirit of a hostess with the daughters of the house about her greeting her guests.

There is a fourth failure which is perhaps the root difficulty. It is the failure to make the most of time. The day opens. The man hastens to his place and finds a score of voices calling him to as many different tasks. He hastily begins the one which seems to call the loudest, and has just begun to gather up the threads of thought when there is a peremptory call in another direction. And so he is driven through the day, not controlling, but controlled, and constantly lashed by the thought of neglected duties. By dint of keeping at it all through the day and often into the night much work is done. The man gets and deserves the reputation of a hard-working man, deliberately sacrificing health, ease, leisure, and the joys of a scholar's life for the public good.

Now this is the first and natural result of the enlarged conception of a librarian's work. The man is dazed by the sense of responsibility and almost crushed by the demands upon his time apparently separate and conflicting. But this should be considered only the first process from which the strong man will speedily evolve a wiser way. The fatal mistake lies in considering this first stage inevitable and final. If a man tarries here it argues limitation, not power. There certainly are men who stand high in public life as well as those holding less prominent positions, who accomplish an enormous amount of work with a sense of freedom and an impression of leisure. As I have observed individual cases, I am led to the conclusion that the explanation lies not in a stronger physique, or a stronger intellect, but in a better organization of work with reference to time. There is no need more imperative than this for all of us who are proud to be called busy people. The trouble is, we think we are too busy to stop and plan. Our philosophic error lies in believing that the work must all be done to-day. Nature herself should teach us that the best work cannot be done in a hurry.

We may not hope in this generation to understand well the working of that complex, mysterious thing which we call human society, but we may at least so relate ourselves and our libraries to it that we may live, move, and grow together.

"Not unrelated, ununified, But to each thought and thing allied, Is perfect Nature's every part Rooted in the mighty Heart."

WHAT A LIBRARY SHOULD BE AND WHAT IT CAN DO

No one has done more to inspire library workers with the feeling that what they are doing is worth while than Dr. Melvil Dewey, pioneer in this country of the modern library and of the socialized library spirit. A sketch of Dr. Dewey will be found in Vol. I. of this series. The following is from the stenographer's report of a brief talk at the Atlanta Conference of the American Library Association, as printed in _Public Libraries_ (Chicago, June, 1899).

Atlanta has been known long in this country as a southern city that believes supremely that education pays, and as the revelation has come late in this century of what the library is or should be, and what the library can do, on this line I will say a few words to you tonight.

We have had an illustration in the recent war with Spain that education pays, in what it means to have the man behind the guns trained. We have an illustration in Mr. Carnegie's work, whose name has been mentioned here in his competition with the rest of the world, illustrating another peculiar American feature that American education pays in dollars and cents; but it is a more recent conception of the part the library has in a system of public education. It took a thousand years to develop our educational system from the university down; first the university as the beginning of all education, and then we must have the colleges to prepare for the universities, the academies and common schools to prepare for the colleges, and it is only in our own generation that we have come to understand that we must begin with the kindergarten and end in our libraries.

I am really pleased tonight that the Young men's association has done this generous work, and that Atlanta is going to pay the money from the taxes. It would be no advantage to this city if your schools were provided for you without charge to the people. Those who study the question from the low plane of dollars and cents, without regard to the higher things in life, have learned that no investigation pays well. In many a community men are giving liberally to the schools, and are beginning to give liberally to the libraries, and they do it because they know it makes everything more valuable--it makes their business more prosperous.

The library is going through the same process the public school went through. Henry Barnard, of Connecticut, visited 27 different states and spoke before them to urge upon them the system of public education, and to provide a guidance for the children.

It is true that the educated parents are more likely to have children educated highly, but there is no question whatever that the great majority of the men and women who are to shape the future of this country will be born in the humblest homes, and we come back to the problem of the general education of all the people as the best possible advancement and the chiefest defense of the nation; it is the concern of the state because it is the duty of the state, because it pays, and because the state does not dare any longer to neglect it. Therefore I call your attention to the fact that we are repeating in libraries exactly the process of the school, and that there were meetings to urge the acceptance of them. There are few who doubt the wisdom of donating money to support the free library, and when the history of the time is written it will be marked as the history of free libraries.

Why is it that the people are taxing themselves erecting beautiful buildings, buying books, paying salaries, printing catalogs, incurring all these expenses, paying out an amount of money that a short time ago would have been thought only a dream? It is a recognition of its necessity and importance. We understand that it is a good thing.

A broad conception at the end of the century of the work of the schools is simply this, to teach the children to think accurately, with strength and with speed. If it is in the school that they get their start, then where do they get their education? Tell me from your own experience, was it from the school that you got most of your ideas? We had an experiment some time ago, when the teachers of New York made an elaborate investigation as to the teaching of boys and girls. The thing that influenced those boys and girls most was the books they read. What, after all, is the supreme end of education? I state that we should teach them to think with accuracy and with speed, but I doubt if there is one who denies the supreme necessity of the building of character. That is what is winning in the peaceful conflicts of commerce. If you care to analyze how character is built, follow it back briefly. Character comes from habits, and habits from actions repeated, and actions from a motive, and a motive from reflection. What makes me reflect? What makes you reflect? What is the cause? Isn't it something that you have read in a book, a magazine, or a paper? So the genealogy is this: reading begets reflection, reflection begets motive, motive begets action, and action begets habit, and habit begets that supreme thing--character. So we have come to recognize that if we are to accomplish the chief end that is before the people, we must strive to control the reading for others.

Reading sometimes carries downhill, as it often carries upward, and there is no way that we can reach the people except through the free library and with proper help from the people.

What Atlanta wants to make out of her citizens is not to train privates, but to train officers. If you go out on the streets you can find a thousand men to do the work of a laborer, where you can find only a few to do the work that will demand five or ten thousand dollars. The world is looking for that class of men. It is the highest salaried man that is the hardest to find. If you would buy a machine, there enters into it the material that is in it; the process of manufacture throughout which has transformed it, and then the approved fitness for performing its functions. The same way with a man--the native that is manufactured; then comes the experience which proves the fitness for his work; and you pay the salary for these things. And by means of our schools and libraries we must reach these girls and boys.

Thomas Edison and other great men say that their whole lives are governed from reading a single book. So the province of the library is to amuse, to inform and inspire. We have the old proverbs, As free as air; As free as water; but the new one that is important to the race is, As free as knowledge. The people of this state cannot afford to have any boy in Georgia who is anxious to know more, how to make his life more valuable, who wants inspiration and is ready to read, and not furnish it to him. Education is the chief concern of the American people, and the states that have done most for their education have been the most prosperous.

It is the concern of the richest as to what should be done for the poorest; you should provide free schools and free libraries, or the failure to do so will react in your own lives. If you say that this ideal is too high, that the library has important functions, but it does not take its place as the equal of the schools, it is because you have not studied this question in all its details. When you do, you will be forced to the conclusion that while we must say that this is the inspiration of a dreamer, remember that it is the devotion of noble minds that never falters, but endures and waits for all it can find, and what it cannot find, creates.

THE PUBLIC LIBRARY IN AMERICAN LIFE

As the last of this particular group of papers we reproduce a view of our public library system by a foreigner who had lived in this country long enough to appreciate it and who was yet able to contrast it with the library systems of European countries--Prof. Munsterberg of Harvard.

Hugo Munsterberg was born in Danzig, Germany, June 1, 1863, educated at Leipzig and Heidelberg, and after serving as assistant professor at the University of Freiburg, became professor of psychology at Harvard in 1892, where he served until his death on Dec. 16, 1916. The subjoined extract is from his book "The Americans" (New York, 1904).

The American's fondness for reading finds clearest expression in the growth of libraries, and in few matters of civilization is America so well fitted to teach the Old World a lesson. Europe has many large and ancient collections of books, and Germany more than all the rest; but they serve only one single purpose--that of scientific investigation; they are the laboratories of research. They are chiefly lodged with the great universities, and even the large municipal libraries are mostly used by those who need material for productive labors, or wish to become conversant with special topics.

Exactly the same type of large library has grown up in America; and here, too, it is chiefly the universities whose stock of books is at the service of the scientific world. Besides these, there are special libraries belonging to learned societies, state law libraries, special libraries of government bureaus and of museums, and largest of all the Library of Congress. The collection of such scientific books began at the earliest colonial period, and at first under theological auspices. The Calvinist Church, more than any other, inclined to the study of books. As early as 1790 the catalog of Harvard College contained 350 pages, of which 150 were taken up by theological works. Harvard has to-day almost a million books, mostly in the department of literature, philology, history, philosophy, and jurisprudence. There are, moreover, in Boston the state library of law, with over a hundred thousand volumes; the Athenaeum, with more than two hundred thousand books; the large scientific library of the Institute of Technology, and many others. Similarly, in other large cities, the university libraries are the nucleus for scientific labors, and are surrounded by admirable special libraries, particularly in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Then, too, the small academic towns, like Princeton, Ithaca, New Haven, and others, have valuable collections of books, which in special subjects are often unique. For many years the American university libraries have been the chief purchasers of the special collections left by deceased European professors. And it often happens, especially through the gift of grateful alumni, that collections of the greatest scientific value, which could not be duplicated, come into the possession even of lesser institutions.

In many departments of investigation, Washington takes the lead with the large collection of the various scientific, economic, and technical bureaus of the government. The best known of these is the unique medical library of the War Department. Then there is the Library of Congress, with many more than a million volumes, which today has an official right to one copy of every book published in the United States, and so may claim to be a national library. It is still not comparable to the many-sided and complete collection of the British Museum; the national library is one-sided, or at least shows striking gaps. Having started as the Library of Congress, it has, aside from its one copy of every American book and the books on natural science belonging to the Smithsonian Institution, few books except those on politics, history, political economy, and law. The lack of space for books, which existed until a few years ago, made it seem inexpedient to spend money for purposes other than the convenience of congressmen. But the American people, in its love for books, has now erected such a building as the world had never before seen devoted to the storing of books. The new Congressional Library was opened in 1897, and since the stacks have still room for several million volumes, the library will soon grow to an all-round completeness like that at London. This Library has a specially valuable collection of manuscripts and correspondences.

All the collections of books which we have so far mentioned are virtually like those of Germany. But since they mostly date from the nineteenth century, the American libraries are more modern, and contain less dead weight in the way of unused folios. Much more important is their greatly superior accessibility. Their reading-rooms are more comfortable and better lighted, their catalogs more convenient, library hours longer, and, above all, books are more easily and quickly delivered. Brooks Adams said recently, about the library at Washington as a place for work, that this building is well-nigh perfect; it is large, light, convenient, and well provided with attendants. In Paris and London, one works in dusty, forbidding, and overcrowded rooms, while here the reading-rooms are numerous, attractive, and comfortable. In the National Library at Paris, one has to wait an hour for a book; in the British Museum, half an hour, and in Washington, five minutes. This rapid service, which makes such a great difference to the student, is found everywhere in America; and everywhere the books are housed in buildings which are palatial, although perhaps not so beautiful as the Washington Library.

Still, all these differences are unessential; in principle the academic libraries are alike in the New and Old Worlds. The great difference between Europe and America begins with the libraries which are not learned, but which are designed to serve popular education. The American public library which is not for science, but for education, is to the European counterpart as the Pullman express train to the village post-chaise.

The scientific libraries of Boston, including that of Harvard University, contain nearly two million printed works; but the largest library of all is distinct from these. It is housed on Copley Square, in a renaissance palace by the side of the Art Museum, and opposite the most beautiful church in America. The staircase of yellow marble, the wonderful wall-paintings, the fascinating arcade on the inner court and the sunlit halls are indeed beautiful. And in and out, from early morning till late evening, week-day and Sunday, move the people of Boston. The stream of men divides in the lower vestibule. Some go to the newspaper room, where several hundred daily newspapers, a dozen of them German, hang on racks. Others wander to the magazine rooms, where the weekly and monthly papers of the world are waiting to be read. Others ascend to the upper stories, where Sargent's famous pictures of the Prophets allure the lover of art, in order to look over more valuable special editions and the art magazines, geographical charts, and musical works. The largest stream of all goes to the second floor, partly into the huge quiet reading-room, partly into the rotunda, which contains the catalog, partly into the hall containing the famous frescoes of the Holy Grail, where the books are given out. Here a million and a half books are delivered every year to be taken home and read. And no one has to wait; an apparatus carries the applicant's card with wonderful speed to the stacks, and the desired book is sent back in automatic cars. Little children meanwhile wander into the juvenile room, where they find the best books for children. And everything invites even the least patient reader to sit down quietly with some sort of a volume--everything is so tempting, so convenient and comfortable, and so surpassingly beautiful. And all this is free to the humblest working-man.

And still, if the citizen of Massachusetts were to be asked of what feature of the public libraries he is most proud, he would probably not mention this magnificent palace in Boston, the capital of the state, but rather the 350 free public libraries scattered through the smaller cities and towns of this state, which is after all only one-third as large as Bavaria. It is these many libraries which do the broadest work for the people. Each little collection, wherever it is, is the center of intellectual and moral enlightenment, and plants and nourishes the desire for self-perfection. Of course, Massachusetts has done more in this respect than any other ward in this respect. But there is no longer any city of moderate size which has not a large public library, and there is no state which does encourage in every possible way the establishment of public libraries in every small community, giving financial aid if it is necessary.

Public libraries have become the favorite Christmas present of philanthropists, and while the hospitals, universities, and museums, have still no reason for complaint, the churches now find the superfluous millions are less apt to go to gay church windows than to well chosen book collections. In the year 1900 there existed more than 5383 public libraries having over a thousand volumes; of these 144 had more than fifty thousand, and 54 had more than a hundred thousand volumes. All together contained, according to the statistics of 1900 more than forty-four million volumes and more than seven million pamphlets; and the average growth was over 8 per cent. There are probably to-day, therefore, fifteen million volumes more on the shelves. The many thousand libraries which have fewer than 999 books are over and above all this.

The make-up of such public libraries may be seen from the sample catalog gotten out by the Library Association a few years since, as a typical collection of five thousand books. This catalog, which, with the exception of the most important foreign classics, contains only books in English, including, however, many translations, contains 227 general reference books, 756 books on history, 635 on biography, 413 on travel, 355 on natural science, 694 on belles-lettres, 809 novels, 225 on art, 220 on religion, 424 on social science, 268 on technical subjects, etc. The cost of this sample collection is $12,000. The proportions between the several divisions are about the same in larger collections. In smaller collections, belles-lettres have a somewhat greater share. The general interest taken by the nation in this matter is shown by the fact that the first edition of 20,000 copies of this sample catalog, of 600 pages, was soon exhausted.

The many-sidedness of this catalog points also to the manifold functions of the public library. It is meant to raise the educational level of the people, and this can be done in three ways: first, interest may be stimulated along new lines; second, those who wish to perfect themselves in their own subjects or in whatsoever special topics, may be provided with technical literature; and third, the general desire for literary entertainment may be satisfied by books of the best or at least not of the worst sort. The directors of libraries see their duties to lie in all three directions. The libraries guide the tastes and interests of the general public, and try to replace the ordinary servant-girl's novel with the best romance of the day and shallow literature with works that are truly instructive. And no community is quite content until its public library has become a sort of general meeting-place and substitute for the saloon and the club. America is the working-man's paradise, and attractive enough to the rich man; but the ordinary man of the middle classes, who in Germany finds his chief comfort in the Bierhalle would find little comfort in America if it were not for the public library, which offers him a home. Thus the public library has come to be a recognized instrument of culture along with the public school; and in all American outposts the school teacher and librarian are among the pioneers.

The learned library cannot do this. To be sure, the university library can help to spread information, and conversely the public library makes room for thousands of volumes on all sorts of scientific topics. But the emphasis is laid very differently in the two cases, and if it were not so neither library would best fulfil its purpose. The extreme quiet of the reference library and the bustle and stir of the public library do not go together. In the one direction America has followed the dignified traditions of Europe; in the other, it has opened new paths and travelled on at a rapid pace. Every year discovers new ideas and plans, new schemes for equipment and the selection of books, for cataloging, and for otherwise gaining in utility. When, for instance, the library in Providence commenced to post a complete list of books and writings pertaining to the subject of every lecture that was given in the city, it was the initiation of a great movement. The juvenile departments are the product of recent years, and are constantly increasing in popularity. There are even, in some cases, departments for blind readers. The state commissions are new, and so also the travelling libraries, which are carried from one village to another.

The great schools for librarians are also new. The German librarian is mostly a scholar; but the American believes that he has improved on the European library systems, not so much by his ample financial resources as by having broken with the academic custom, and having secured librarians with a special library training. And since there are such officials in many thousand libraries, and the great institutions create a constant demand for such persons, the library schools, which offer generally a three years' course, having been found very successful.

Admittedly, all this technical apparatus is expensive; the Boston library expends every year a quarter of a million dollars for administrative expenses. But the American taxpayer supports this more gladly than any other burden, knowing that the public library is the best weapon against alcoholism and crime, against corruption and discontent, and that the democratic country can flourish only when the instinct of self-perfection as it exists in every American is thoroughly satisfied.

BOOKS AND THE PUBLIC LIBRARY

This paper and the two that follow it relate specifically to reading as fostered by the public library and yet not sufficiently to the provision of books to the public as a definite library service to warrant postponing them to the section relating to that branch of community service. They have a somewhat academic or "literary flavor," and yet are permeated not with the idea of "books for scholars" but with that of "books for people"--the idea of reading as a universal function--duty, pleasure and inspiration in one--which is distinctly that of a socialized library. The first paper is an address made by Lowell at the opening of the new public library building at Chelsea, Mass., Dec. 22, 1885.

James Russell Lowell was born in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 22, 1819, and graduated at Harvard in 1838, succeeding Longfellow as professor of Literature there in 1855. He edited _The North American Review_ in 1863-72, served as U.S. minister to Spain in 1877-80 and to Great Britain in 1880-85. He died in Cambridge, Aug. 12, 1891.

"A few years ago my friend, Mr. Alexander Ireland, published a very interesting volume which he called "The book-lover's euchiridion," the handbook, that is to say, of those who love books. It was made up of extracts from the writings of a great variety of distinguished men, ancient and modern, in praise of books. It was a chorus of many voices in many tongues, a hymn of gratitude and praise, full of such piety and fervor as can be parelleled only in songs dedicated to the supreme power, the supreme wisdom and the supreme love. Nay, there is a glow of enthusiasm and sincerity in it which is often painfully wanting in those other too commonly mechanical compositions. We feel at once that here it is out of the fulness of the heart, yes, and of the head, too, that the mouth speaketh. Here was none of that compulsory commonplace which is wont to characterize those 'testimonials of celebrated authors,' by means of which publishers sometimes strive to linger out the passages of a hopeless book toward its _requiescat_ in oblivion. These utterances which Mr. Ireland has gathered lovingly together are stamped with that spontaneousness which is the mint mark of all sterling speech. It is true that they are mostly, as is only natural, the utterances of literary men, and there is a well-founded proverbial distrust of herring that bear only the brand of the packer, and not that of the sworn inspector. But to this objection a cynic might answer with the question, 'Are authors so prone, then, to praise the works of other people that we are to doubt them when they do it un-asked?' Perhaps the wisest thing I could have done to-night would have been to put upon the stand some of the more weighty of this cloud of witnesses. But since your invitation implied that I should myself say something, I will endeavor to set before you a few of the commonplaces of the occasion, as they may be modified by passing through my own mind, or by having made themselves felt in my own experience.

The greater part of Mr. Ireland's witnesses testify to the comfort and consolation they owe to books, to the refuge they have found in them from sorrow or misfortune, to their friendship, never estranged and outliving all others. This testimony they volunteered. Had they been asked, they would have borne evidence as willingly to the higher and more general uses of books in their service to the commonwealth, as well as to the individual man. Consider, for example, how a single page of Burke may emancipate the young student of politics from narrow views and merely contemporaneous judgments. Our English ancestors, with that common-sense which is one of the most useful, though not one of the most engaging, properties of the race, made a rhyming proverb, which says that:

"When land and goods are gone and spent, Then learning is most excellent";

and this is true, so far as it goes, though it goes, perhaps, hardly far enough. The law also calls only the earth and what is immovably attached to it _real_ property, but I am of opinion that those only are real possessions which abide with a man after he has been stripped of those others falsely so called, and which alone save him from seeming and from being the miserable forked radish to which the bitter scorn of Lear degraded every child of Adam. The riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot be alienated. But they may be shared, they may be distributed, and it is the object and office of a free public library to perform these beneficial functions.

"Books," says Wordsworth, "are a real world," and he was thinking, doubtless, of such books as are not merely the triumphs of pure intellect, however supreme, but of those in which intellect infused with the sense of beauty aims rather to produce delight than conviction, or, if conviction, then through intuition rather than formal logic, and, leaving what Donne wisely calls

"Unconscious things, matters of fact,"

to science and the understanding, seeks to give ideal expression to the abiding realities of the spiritual world for which the outward and visible world serves at best but as the husk and symbol. Am I wrong in using the word _realities_?--wrong in insisting on the distinction between the real and the actual? in assuming for the ideal an existence as absolute and self-subsistent as that which appeals to our senses--nay, so often cheats them in the matter of fact? How very small a part of the world we truly live in is represented by what speaks to us through the senses when compared with that vast realm of the mind which is peopled by memory and imagination, and with such shining inhabitants! These walls, these faces, what are they in comparison with the countless images, the innumerable population which every one of us can summon up to the tiny show-box of the brain, in material breadth scarce a span, yet infinite as space and time? And in what, I pray, are those we gravely call historical characters, of which each new historian strains his neck to get a new and different view, in any sense more real than the personages of fiction? Do not serious and earnest men discuss Hamlet as they would Cromwell or Lincoln? Does Caesar, does Alaric, hold existence by any other or stronger tenure than the Christian of Bunyan or the Don Quixote of Cervantes or the Antigone of Sophocles? Is not the history which is luminous because of an indwelling and perennial truth to nature, because of that light which never was on land or sea, really _more_ true, in the highest sense, than many a weary chronicle with names, date, and place in which "an Amurath to Amurath succeeds"? Do we know as much of any authentic Danish prince as of Hamlet?

But to come back a little nearer to Chelsea and the occasion that has called us together. The founders of New England, if sometimes, when they found it needful, an impracticable, were always a practical people. Their first care, no doubt, was for an adequate supply of powder, and they encouraged the manufacture of musket bullets by enacting that they should pass as currency at a farthing each--a coinage nearer to its nominal value, and not heavier than some with which we are familiar. Their second care was that "good learning should not perish from among us," and to this end they at once established the Latin School in Boston, and soon after the college at Cambridge. The nucleus of this was, as you all know, the bequest in money by John Harvard. Hardly less important, however, was the legacy of his library, a collection of good books, inconsiderable measured by the standard of to-day, but very considerable then as the possession of a private person. From that little acorn what an oak has sprung, and from its acorn again what a vocal forest, as old Howell would have called it--old Howell, whom I love to cite, because his name gave their title to the 'Essays of Elia,' and is borne with slight variation by one of the most delightful of modern authors! It was, in my judgment, those two foundations, more than anything else, which gave to New England character its bent and to Boston that literary supremacy which, I am told, she is in danger of losing, but which she will not lose till she and all the world lose Holmes.

The opening of a free public library, then, is a most important event in the history of any town. A college training is an excellent thing; but, after all, the better part of every man's education is that which he gives himself, and it is for this that a good library should furnish the opportunity and the means. I have sometimes thought that our public schools undertook to teach too much, and that the older system, which taught merely the three R's, and taught them well, leaving natural selection to decide who should go farther, was the better. However this may be, all that is primarily needful in order to use a library is the ability to read. I say primarily, for there must also be the inclination, and, after that, some guidance in reading well. Formerly the duty of a librarian was considered too much that of a watchdog to keep people as much as possible away from the books, and to hand these over to his successor as little worn by use as he could. Librarians now, it is pleasant to see, have a different notion of their trust, and are in the habit of preparing for the direction of the inexperienced lists of such books as they think best worth reading. Cataloging has also, thanks in great measure to American librarians, become a science, and catalogs, ceasing to be labyrinths without a clew, are furnished with finger-posts at every turn. Subject catalogs again save the beginner a vast deal of time and trouble, by supplying him for nothing with one at least of the results of thorough scholarship, the knowing where to look for what he wants. I do not mean by this that there is or can be any short-cut to learning, but that there may be, and is, such a short-cut to information that will make learning more easily accessible.

But have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key that admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination; to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us; it revives for us without a miracle the Age of Wonder, endowing us with the shoes of swiftness and the cap of darkness, so that we walk invisible like fern seed and witness unharmed the plague at Athens or Florence or London, accompanying Caesar on his marches, or look in on Catiline in council with his fellow-conspirators, or Guy Fawkes in the cellar of St. Stephen's. We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, submit to any insult, for the sake of getting themselves or their children into what is euphemistically called good society. Did it ever occur to them that there is a select society of all the centuries to which they and theirs can be admitted for the asking--a society, too, which will not involve them in ruinous expense and still more ruinous waste of time and health and faculties?

Southey tells us that, in his walk, one stormy day, he met an old woman, to whom, by way of greeting, he made the rather obvious remark that it was dreadful weather. She answered, philosophically, that, in her opinion, '_any_ weather was better than none!' I should be half inclined to say that any reading was better than none, allaying the crudeness of the statement by the Yankee proverb, which tells us that, though 'all deacons are good, there's odds in deacons.' Among books, certainly there is much variety of company, ranging from the best to the worst, from Plato to Zola, and the first lesson in reading well is that which teaches us to distinguish between literature and merely printed matter. The choice lies wholly with ourselves. We have the key put into our hands; shall we unlock the pantry or the oratory? There is a Wallachian legend which, like most of the figments of popular fancy, has a moral in it. One Bakala, a good-for-nothing kind of fellow in his way, having had the luck to offer a sacrifice especially well pleasing to God, is taken up into heaven. He finds the Almighty sitting in something like the best room of a Wallachian peasant's cottage--there is always something profoundly pathetic in the homeliness of the popular imagination, forced, like the princess in the fairy tale, to weave its semblance of gold tissue out of straw. On being asked what reward he desires for the good service he has done, Bakala, who had always passionately longed to be the owner of a bagpipe, seeing a half wornout one lying among some rubbish in a corner of the room, begs eagerly that it may be bestowed on him. The Lord, with a smile of pity at the meanness of his choice, grants him his boon, and Bakala goes back to earth delighted with his prize. With an infinite possibility within his reach, with the choice of wisdom, of power, of beauty at his tongue's end, he asked according to his kind, and his sordid wish is answered with a gift as sordid. Yes, there is a choice in books as in friends, and the mind sinks or rises to the level of its habitual society, is subdued, as Shakespeare says of the dyer's hand, to what it works in. Cato's advice, _cum bonis ambula_, consort with the good, is quite as true if we extend it to books, for they, too, insensibly give away their own nature to the mind that converses with them. They either beckon upward or drag down. And it is certainly true that the material of thought reacts upon the thought itself. Shakespeare himself would have been commonplace had he been paddocked in a thinly shaven vocabulary, and Phidias, had he worked in wax, only a more inspired Mrs. Jarley. A man is known, says the proverb, by the company he keeps, and not only so, but made by it. Milton makes his fallen angels grow small to enter the infernal council room, but the soul, which God meant to be the spacious chamber where high thoughts and generous aspirations might commune together, shrinks and narrows itself to the measure of the meaner company that is wont to gather there, hatching conspiracies against our better selves. We are apt to wonder at the scholarship of the men of three centuries ago and at a certain dignity of phrase that characterizes them. They were scholars because they did not read so many things as we. They had fewer books, but these were of the best. Their speech was noble, because they lunched with Plutarch and supped with Plato. We spend as much time over print as they did, but instead of communing with the choice thoughts of choice spirits, and unconsciously acquiring the grand manner of that supreme society, we diligently inform ourselves and cover the continent with a network of speaking wires to inform us of such inspiring facts as that a horse belonging to Mr. Smith ran away on Wednesday, seriously damaging a valuable carryall; that a son of Mr. Brown swallowed a hickory nut on Thursday; and that a gravel bank caved in and buried Mr. Robinson alive on Friday. Alas! it is we ourselves that are getting buried alive under this avalanche of earthy impertinences. It is we who, while we might each in his humble way be helping our fellows into the right path, or adding one block to the climbing spire of a fine soul, are willing to become mere sponges saturated from the stagnant goosepond of village gossip.

One is sometimes asked by young people to recommend a course of reading. My advice would be that they should confine themselves to the supreme books in whatever literature, or still better to choose some one great author, and make themselves thoroughly familiar with him. For, as all roads lead to Rome, so do they likewise lead away from it, and you will find that, in order to understand perfectly and weigh exactly any vital piece of literature, you will be gradually and pleasantly persuaded to excursions and explorations of which you little dreamed when you began, and will find yourselves scholars before you are aware. For remember that there is nothing less profitable than scholarship for the mere sake of scholarship, nor anything more wearisome in the attainment. But the moment you have a definite aim attention is quickened, the mother of memory, and all that you acquire groups and arranges itself in an order that is lucid, because everywhere and always it is in intelligent relation to a central object of constant and growing interest. This method also forces upon us the necessity of thinking, which is, after all, the highest result of all education. For what we want is not learning, but knowledge--that is, the power to make learning answer its true end as a quickener of intelligence and a widener of our intellectual sympathies. I do not mean to say that every one is fitted by nature or inclination for a definite course of study, or indeed for serious study in any sense. I am quite willing that these should 'browse in a library,' as Dr. Johnson called it, 'to their hearts' content. It is, perhaps, the only way in which time may be profitably wasted. But desultory reading will not make a "full man," as Bacon understood it, of one who has not Johnson's memory, his power of assimilation, and, above all, his comprehensive view of the relations of things. "Read not," says Lord Bacon, in his "Essay of Studies," "to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested--that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously (carefully), and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. _Some books also may be read by deputy._" This is weighty and well said, and I would call your attention especially to the wise words with which the passage closes.

I have been speaking of such books as should be chosen for profitable reading. A public library, of course, must be far wider in its scope. It should contain something for all tastes, as well as the material for a thorough grounding in all branches of knowledge. It should be rich in books of reference, in encyclopaedias, where one may learn without cost of research what things are generally known. For it is far more useful to know these than to know those that are _not_ generally known. Not to know them is the defect of those half trained and therefore hasty men who find a mare's nest on every branch of the tree of knowledge. A library should contain ample stores of history, which, if it do not always deserve the pompous title which Bolingbroke gave it, of philosophy teaching by example, certainly teaches many things profitable for us to know and lay to heart; teaches among other things how much of the present is still held in mortmain by the past; teaches that, if there be no controlling purpose, there is, at least, a sternly logical sequence in human affairs, and that chance has but a trifling dominion over them; teaches why things are and must be so and not otherwise; teaches, perhaps, more than anything else, the value of personal character as a chief factor in what used to be called destiny, for that cause is strong which has not a multitude but one strong man behind it. History is indeed mainly the biography of a few imperial men, and forces home upon us the useful lesson how infinitesimally important our own private affairs are to the universe in general. History is clarified experience, and yet how little do men profit by it--nay, how should we expect it of those who so seldom are taught anything by their own! Delusions, especially economical delusions, seem the only things that have any chance of an earthly immortality. I would have plenty of biography. It is no insignificant fact that eminent men have always loved their Plutarch, since example, whether for emulation or avoidance, is never so poignant as when presented to us in a striking personality. Autobiographies are also instructive reading to the student of human nature, though generally written by men who were more interesting to themselves than to their fellow-men. I have been told that Emerson and George Eliot agreed in thinking Rousseau's "Confessions" the most interesting book they had ever read.

A public library should also have many and full shelves of political economy, for the dismal science, as Carlyle called it, if it prove nothing else, will go far toward proving that theory is the bird in the bush, though she sing more sweetly than the nightingale, and that the millennium will not hasten its coming in deference to the most convincing string of resolutions that were ever unanimously adopted in public meeting. It likewise induces in us a profound distrust of social panaceas.

I would have a public library abundant in translations of the best books in all languages; for though no work of genius can be adequately translated, because every word of it is permeated with what Milton calls 'the precious life blood of a master spirit,' which cannot be transfused into the veins of the best translation, yet some acquaintance with foreign and ancient literatures has the liberalizing effect of foreign travel. He who travels by translation travels more hastily and superficially, but brings home something that is worth having, nevertheless. Translations properly used, by shortening the labor of acquisition, add as many years to our lives as they subtract from the processes of our education.

In such a library the sciences should be fully represented, that men may at least learn to know in what a marvellous museum they live, what a wonder worker is giving them an exhibition daily for nothing. Nor let art be forgotten in all its many forms, not as the antithesis of science, but as her elder or fairer sister, whom we love all the more that her usefulness cannot be demonstrated in dollars and cents. I should be thankful if an every day laborer among us could have his mind illumined, as those of Athens and of Florence had, with some image of what is best in architecture, painting and sculpture to train his crude perceptions and perhaps call out latent faculties. I should like to see the works of Ruskin within the reach of every artisan among us. For I hope some day that the delicacy of touch and accuracy of eye that have made our mechanics in some departments the best in the world may give us the same supremacy in works of wider range and more purely ideal scope.

Voyages and travels I would also have, good store, especially the earlier, when the world was fresh and unhackneyed and men saw things invisible to the modern eye. They are fast sailing ships to waft away from present trouble to the Fortunate Isles.

To wash down the dryer morsels that every library must necessarily offer at its board, let there be plenty of imaginative literature, and let its range be not too narrow to stretch from Dante to the elder Dumas. The world of the imagination is not the world of abstraction and nonentity, as some conceive, but a world formed out of chaos by the sense of the beauty that _is_ in man and the earth on which he dwells. It is the realm of might be, our heaven of refuge from the shortcomings and disillusions of life. It is, to quote Spenser, who knew it well,

"The world's sweet inn from care and wearisome turmoil."

Do we believe, then, that God gave us in mockery this splendid faculty of sympathy with things that are a joy forever? For my part, I believe that the love and study of works of imagination is of practical utility in a country so profoundly material in its leading tendencies as ours. The hunger after purely intellectual delights, the content with ideal possessions, cannot but be good for us in maintaining a wholesome balance of the character and of the faculties. I for one shall never be persuaded, that Shakespeare left a less useful legacy to his countrymen than Watt. We hold all the deepest, all the highest satisfactions of life as tenants of imagination. Nature will keep up the supply of what are called hard-headed people without our help, and, if it come to that, there are other as good uses for heads as at the end of battering rams.

I know that there are many excellent people who object to the reading of novels as a waste of time, if not as otherwise harmful. But I think they are trying to outwit nature, who is sure to prove cunninger than they. Look at children. One boy shall want a chest of tools and one a book, and of those who want books one shall ask for a botany, another for a romance. They will be sure to get what they want, and we are doing a grave wrong to their morals by driving them to do things on the sly, to steal that food which their constitution craves and which is wholesome for them, instead of having it freely and frankly given them as the wisest possible diet. If we cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, so neither can we hope to succeed with the opposite experiment. But we may spoil the silk for its legitimate uses. I can conceive of no healthier reading for a boy, or girl either, than Scott's novels or Cooper's, to speak only of the dead. I have found them very good reading at least for one young man, for one middle-aged man, and for one who is growing old. No, no; banish the Antiquary, banish Leather Stocking, and banish all the world! Let us not go about to make life duller than it is.

But I must shut the doors of my imaginary library, or I shall never end. It is left for me to say a few words of fitting acknowledgment to Mr. Fitz for his judicious and generous gift. It is always a pleasure to me that I believe the custom of giving away money during their lifetime (and there is nothing harder for most men to part with, except prejudice) is more common with Americans than with any other people. It is a still greater pleasure to see that the favorite direction of their beneficence is toward the founding of colleges and libraries. My observation has led me to believe that there is no country in which wealth is so sensible of its obligations as our own. And, as most of our rich men have risen from the ranks, may we not fairly attribute this sympathy with their kind to the benign influence of democracy rightly understood? My dear and honored friend, George William Curtis, told me that he was sitting in front of the late Mr. Ezra Cornell in a convention, where one of the speakers made a Latin quotation. Mr. Cornell leaned forward and asked for a translation of it, which Mr. Curtis gave him. Mr. Cornell thanked him, and added: "If I can help it, no young man shall grow up in New York hereafter without the chance, at least, of knowing what a Latin quotation means when he hears it." This was the germ of Cornell University, and it found food for its roots in that sympathy and thoughtfulness for others of which I just spoke. This is the healthy side of that good nature which democracy tends to foster, and which is so often harmful when it has its root in indolence or indifference; especially harmful where our public affairs are concerned, and where it is easiest, because there we are giving away what belongs to other people. In this country it is as laudably easy to procure signatures to a subscription paper as it is shamefully so to obtain them for certificates of character and recommendations to office. And is not this public spirit a natural evolution from that frame of mind in which New England was colonized, and which found expression in these grave words of Robinson and Brewster: "We are knit together as a body in a most strict and sacred bond and covenant of the Lord, of the violation of which we make great conscience, and by virtue whereof we hold ourselves strictly tied to all care of each other's good, and of the whole." Let us never forget the deep and solemn import of these words. The problem before us is to make a whole of our many discordant parts, many foreign elements, and I know of no way in which this can better be done than by providing a common system of education and a common door of access to the best books by which that education may be continued, broadened, and made fruitful. For it is certain that, whatever we do or leave undone, those discordant parts and foreign elements are to be, whether we will or no, members of that body which Robinson and Brewster had in mind, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, for good or ill.

There is no way in which a man can build so secure and lasting a monument for himself as in a public library. Upon that he may confidently allow "Resurgam" to be carved, for through his good deed he will rise again in the grateful remembrance and in the lifted and broadened minds and fortified characters of generation after generation. The pyramids may forget their builders, but memorials such as this have longer memories.

Mr. Fitz has done his part in providing your library with a dwelling. It will be for the citizens of Chelsea to provide it with worthy habitants. So shall they, too, have a share in the noble eulogy of the ancient wise man: "The teachers shall shine as the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever."

THE INFLUENCE OF GOOD BOOKS

The following paragraphs, which are from an address delivered by Rev. Dr. Collyer at the opening of the Richard Sugden Library at Spencer, Mass., are taken from a report in _The Library Journal_ (September, 1889). The autobiographical portions, perhaps, are little related to the progress of libraries here in the United States, but their interest is so great that more of them have been included here than are strictly pertinent to our subject.

Robert Collyer was born in Keighley, Yorkshire, Eng., Dec. 8, 1823. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith as a boy of 14, came to Shoemakertown, Pa., with his parents in 1850 and followed there the trade of a hammermaker. Later he entered the ministry of the Unitarian church and in 1860 founded Unity church in Chicago. In 1879 he became pastor of the Church of the Messiah in New York City, where he died in 1912.

When Richard Sugden asked me to come to Spencer and say some word which would fit this occasion, I wrote him by the next mail that I should be ever so glad to come, and felt that it was a great honor to receive such an invitation, and a great pleasure. Nor was the trouble of much account--which touches us all who say Aye to such an invitation on the impulse of the moment and then wonder how we shall make our promise good. My old friend wanted me to come, and not another and better man, and to say the word which was in my heart to-day, whatever this might be; and this was enough, because I had read in the papers--what he was far too modest to tell me, beyond the merest mention--about the gift of Richard Sugden to his town, and so I said it makes no great matter what any man may say, the thing he has done tells its own story, and tells it more nobly than I could ever hope to do, more nobly and in this fashion which shames my speech. For our words float away on the summer winds, to be caught, it may be, and set in type and read by those who care for such things, and then to die and be forgotten; but this your friend and mine has done in Spencer will be eloquent with the silence which is golden, and still tell its tale when we are all dead and dust who gather here to-day. It is a poor and scant manhood which does not long now and then to be remembered some little while after the grass grows green and the daisies bloom on the grave. To have them speak of us at the fire-side and in the workshop and the market, remembering what was worthy in us and forgetting what was base, though there may be no more to tell by comparison than Dr. Ripley told down in Concord, as he stood by the dust of a man in his own town, and being sorely troubled to find some real worth in the man's life he could dwell on for a moment, said, "He was the best man I ever knew at a fire." I cannot even guess whether Richard Sugden ever thought of this as one of the rewards which must return to him for his gift to Spencer, and I love to think that to his generous heart the work was its own reward. But I say, as we stand here on this day of gift and dedication, that if this had been his sole purpose, to be held in grateful remembrance of his fellow-townsmen and their children through centuries of time, then he has taken out an insurance that will stand good always and keep his memory green in the town of Spencer. And not here alone, but far away across the sea in old Yorkshire, where his home was in the old time before he came to this new world to seek his fortune, and, far more and better than that, to earn it honestly and well. The story will be told there long after to-day and to-morrow, how one of the Sugdens who went out from among them gave this gift, and then the kith and kin will hold up their heads and feel that the fine old name has won still another patent of nobility. A poor youth he was in the narrow, contracted, dear old land, where the poor were held by a cruel bit. And a voice came to him, saying, "Get thee out from thy kindred and thy father's house unto a land that I will tell thee of"; and he followed the voice, as I did also, to the promised land; carved out his fortune honest and fair, I say, but then could not be content to enrich his own family alone, or, as so many do, to remember his town in his will. He must build this noble structure, please God, in his own lifetime, and convey it by free gift to you and yours forever; and so the work is done, and so well done, to all seeming, that if you care for the gift as your friend has cared for its creation, we may say, as old Andrew Fairservice said of the cathedral in Glasgow, "Keep airn and gunpooder aff it, and it will stand to the crack o'doom."

My friend and yours is also an Englishman and a Yorkshireman, as you know, by birth and breeding, as I am also, and I am the more glad and proud of what he has done for that reason; because I still love old England with a very tender love after these forty years of absence, as I know he does also. But I have had to notice how very many of us who came here from England to find a home in the American republic, and it may be make their fortune, can find nothing so good in this new world as that they left behind them, and no matter how much wealth they may win, they do nothing as a rule for the town they live in, like this your friend has done in Spencer. He could not be content to be a mere exile from England, he must be a citizen of the United States and blend his life with the life in this new world which has made him so much more of a man than he ever could have been had he stayed on that hill-side in old Yorkshire. This is the true home of his heart and life, here he won his wealth and found ample room to grow to be the man you honor, and here is one proof among many he has given in all these years, that while he was born in England and is proud of it, though he may not say so, he was born again in America, and does not love the old land less but the new land more, as every man must who comes here to share your life, if he is worth his salt.

You will pardon me, I know, as you receive the gift, for this word in praise of the giver, while he may find it hard to do so; but for that I do not care, because in asking me to come here and say the word that was in my heart he must run his risk and take it as it came to me, and insisted on being said. Richard Sugden falls into line with our home-born men far and wide, but especially in Massachusetts, who have done or are ready to do some such thing as he has done now in Spencer--building these public libraries in the towns where they live or from which they went away to seek their fortune; public libraries, which range with the schools and churches and the town halls; which are the four-square defence of our life as citizens of the republic and of our intelligence and virtue, when they are nobly maintained. They can do no nobler thing. They are sure of their reward, also, if they want one, in the grateful remembrance of their towns and cities, and open the way for others again who wonder what they can do to the finest purpose; men who have made their fortune and have not been struck by what we may call the greenback paralysis, through which the hand that gets takes all the strength from the hand that gives. What can we do better, they will say in such a case, than this Richard Sugden has done for Spencer, and many another man far and wide?--see to it that our town also shall have a public library, which shall be its pride and joy, and make perfect so far as we can the defence from ignorance and vice and crime; open a fountain from which the waters of life may flow forever for those who thirst for knowledge or whatever good books can give them? And, as I have had to notice up among the mountains this summer how I would not feel thirsty till I came to a clear, cool spring, but then would drink to my heart's content, so such fountains as these will also create the thirst they can so nobly allay, while still we keep on drinking in answer to their perpetual invitation, as the years come and go.

And now shall I tell you a very simple story touching my own life, which will help to make good my thought of the worth of this you are doing in Spencer through your free public library, and have been doing, as I understand, these 30 years, which is in itself a great and singular honor to your town, maintaining a free library and reading-room at your own proper charges, for which your friend and fellow-citizen has built this noble edifice, with some such feeling as he had in the old time who built the temple that the ark of the covenant and the rod which budded and the sacred books might have an abiding and splendid home. It was my lot to be born as your friend was and mine, in a poor and small home, with this thirst in my nature, as far back as I can remember, for something to read. And I mind very well the first book I ever bought with my own penny, the delectable history of Whittington and his Cat, which cast such a spell over my imagination that when I went up Highgate Hill over London the other summer, and saw the stone on which poor Dick sat down to hear the bells ringing far below, which lured him back again to fame and fortune, I found I was a small boy again reading my small wonder-book, and the old stone divided the honors of a tender interest with the red granite shaft set above the grave of the woman of finest genius England has to her name, George Eliot, which is a few minutes' walk away.

There were a few books in our small cottage of three rooms, but these were among the best in the English tongue, the Bible and Bunyan and Goldsmith, with a few more I do not now remember, but these I read as you drink at clear, cool springs. Then a man came along from over the moors and brought Burns with him, and another brought Shakespeare. My father borrowed these for me to read, and the world grew great and wide and wonderful to me as I read them, while to this day I notice that I care more for the history of England in Shakespeare's grand dramas than I do for Hume and Froude and Macaulay, so great was the spell cast again over my life. Then an old farmer came along with a couple of volumes, and said, "Here, lad, I notice thou is fond o' good reading, and I think thou will like to read these books." It was Irving's Sketch-Book and it was Christmas day, and I was away from home then and lonesome, wanting to be with my folks and to sit by the old fireside, but the magic wand of Irving touched me and stole away all my tears. Still, as you may see, this was only hand-to-mouth reading. I had never seen a public library, but had heard of them and longed to find one somewhere, sometime, as, I fear, I never had longed to find my way into heaven. Well, I heard of one that had been started only three miles away, and so I went with my heart in my mouth to see what I could find to read in the wonderful new library. I can see the books now standing on the shelves in the small upper room, and recall the old delight of my youth. I go into the Astor Library now and then when I have time, rich in the lore of all the ages, and have wandered through some of the finest in the world beside, but that small room in Addingham is still the story of one's first love. There were some 200 volumes, but here I was with all this wealth of books at my command at about the cost of three days' work in a year. I cannot tell you the story of that first grand passion and the delight of it. I had found a library. I like that honest Dutchman, a fine old scholar says, who told me that one page of Plato did him more good than ten bumpers of wine, and that was the way I felt about those 200 volumes. I had found out the unspeakable delight of drinking all my heart could desire, and struck the matchless intoxication of noble and wholesome books, that leave no headache or heartache when you are sober, only it was a good while before I got sober.

Then I came in due time to this new world and began to work again at the anvil in Pennsylvania, my own proper business I expected to follow all my life, and presently heard of a library in the small town of Hatboro, six or seven miles away, six one way and seven the other. A fine old farmer had found a long while ago that this was the noblest use he could make of a good deal of his money, to build up a library away among the rich green lands, and so there it was waiting for me with its treasure of good books. I see them again as they stand on the shelves, and think I could walk right in and lay my hands on those that won me most potently and cast their spell again over my heart, though it is five and thirty years since I was within the doors. I may mention Hawthorne among them all as the author I found there for the first time who won my heart for good and all, as we may say, and holds it still. Then I found a great treasure in no long time in Philadelphia, that I could no more exhaust than you can exhaust the spring we have been glancing at by drinking, which dips down toward the deepness of the world. I was still bound fast to the anvil, for this was our living, but there was my life, so far as good books could make it, rich for me and noble in the great library again seven miles away. So what matter about the hard day's work at the anvil, while there was some new volume to read when the day's work was done or old one to read with an ever new delight. My new book or old one, with the sweet green lane in the summer time where I could walk while the birds sang their mating song, and the fragrance of the green things growing floated on the soft summer air, and the fireside in winter with the good wife busy about the room, and the little ones sleeping in their cribs, I look back to those times still and wonder whether they were not the best I ever knew. I was reading some lines the other day in an old English ballad written 300 years ago, and they told the story of those times:

"O for a booke, and a shadie nook, eyther indoore, or out, With the green leaves whisp'ring overhede, or the streete cries all about, Where I maie reade, all at my ease, both of the New and Olde, For a right good Booke, whereon to looke, was better to me than Golde."

And so I touch the story of my own life for some poor evidence of what good books can do for us and for the worth of what you have been doing in Spencer all these years, and are made glad to day by this library building which crowns the good endeavor; a place that will not shame but will glorify your purpose and hold it to the noblest and best endeavors you can make in the time to come, for such a shrine will be sure to draw books to it always, worthy of its beauty and grace, and there will be other men and women also to follow in the steps of Richard Sugden, and bring to it costly works and rare and beautiful, worthy to be in the palaces of kings while still you will see to it that the noble provision of books for the general reading rests directly as it has done so long on your own generous care.

You have made this noble boon of good books easy and opulent for the workingmen of Spencer. When I came to this new world and had not heard as yet of that library among the green lands, but must have books on any terms, and the terms were hard, and the good wife watching not the dollars but the very cents because they must all be saved to furnish the little home, I can well remember how I bought a book one day for half a dollar, far too big to smuggle into the cottage, and hid it in the bushes, watched my chances the next day, and got it in all safe and sound; and some days after, when she caught me reading, and said, "Where did you get that book, my dear?" I answered, "Why, I have had it for some time"; and then she only said, "Indeed!" for she was patient with me and good; and then, it was in what somebody calls our treacle moon. The workingmen of Spencer fall on happy times. Here are books easy to come at as the water you drink and the air you breathe and stores of them which can never be exhausted. If it had come to pass thirty years ago that some man delving in your wild hills had struck gold, and all the eager manhood of New England had gone crazy to delve for gold where Spencer stands, and had found it in mighty stores, I wonder whether that would have been such a boon to Spencer and the world as this you have done--establishing great industries and wholesome and good; beckoning the working forces from far and wide to come here and take hold with you on such terms as we can find nowhere else outside this new world. Brother McGlynn, I remember, as we rode together to the funeral of Gen. Grant, called out some half-dozen times, "God's world for the workingman!" You did this who were the pioneers of the strong and steadfast town, and then you said, We must have a free public library, and pay the bills; we have got our churches started, and our schools, and our place for town-meeting--the tap-root of the tree of liberty in New England, a living tree, and no mere liberty-pole, and reaching down 200 years--now we must complete the walls of the city, which standeth four-square, by a free public library, and so do what men may to maintain a fair public virtue and intelligence within the lines of Spencer; these men we employ shall have books to read of every kind any man ought to read, and the ought shall be large and free and fair; and so the thing was done.

The thirty years have come and gone; the free public library has done its noble and beautiful work. It is a new departure we touch to-day in this ceremony of gift and acceptance. This library will grow always more worthy the name your friend and neighbor has made for it from this time. They say that in Scotland once a man sent for his minister and said, "If I give L20,000 to the church do you think it will be reckoned in my account when I get through down here?" And the minister said: "I do not feel sure about that; but it is weel worth the experiment." I do feel sure about this, and the worth of what you can do, to be placed to your credit, not yonder but right here in the town of Spencer. There can be no nobler investment, and but few as noble as this you have made these thirty years for all who have the hunger and thirst in them good books can satisfy; while still with poor Oliver in the story, we ask for more; and they are not dead things, as Milton says, but contain a potency of life as active as the soul from which they sprang:

"Books are each a world; and those we know Are a substantial world both pure and good; Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow. And books are yours Within whose silent chambers treasure lies Preserved from age to age; more precious far Than that accumulated store of gold And orient gems, which for a day of need The Sultans hide deep in ancestral vaults. These stores of truth you can unlock at will."

BOOKS AND LIFE

The influence of books on the community has been used in this address by Dean (now President) Birge as a basis for discussing their reaction on special groups, especially those differentiated by age and sex, and how far the library should be guided by it and take advantage of it. It is perhaps the best general treatment of the group features of socialized library work by a speaker of authority, not a professional librarian.

Edward Asahel Birge was born at Troy, N.Y., Sept. 7, 1851, graduated at Williams in 1873 and since 1875 has been a member of the University of Wisconsin faculty, serving successively as instructor in natural history, professor of zoology, dean of the college of arts and sciences, acting president, and finally in 1919, president of the University. He has also served as a director of the Free Library at Madison, and in 1906 was president of the Wisconsin Library Association, before whom this address was delivered.

The aspect of the subject to which I would call your attention is the often observed fact of the extent to which modern life in all of its phases, is becoming based upon books. I say in all of its phases, for we are concerned with the present extent of this relation between books and life with its rapid increase, rather than with its existence. Ever since the beginning of human society men have based their actions on the teachings of experience. Part of these teachings each individual has directly derived from his environment, and he has supplemented and enlarged them by means of those coming from the remembered experience of others, often belonging to an older generation. Later in history there were added those teachings derived from books--from the recorded experience of others. With that enlargement of the basis of human action which comes from the remembered experience of others we, as librarians, have nothing to do, and, indeed, there is little to say about it now which could not have been said with equal propriety, one, two, or twenty centuries ago. With books the case is different. The last century, the last generation, the last decade--each has seen the transfer of the basis of action from the oral to the printed word, which could be paralleled by no other period of equal length in the history of civilization. The story of this transfer from talk to print, from rule of thumb to textbook, from tradition to school, from practise to science, is long and intensely interesting. I can touch only a few phases of it.

First consider the lengthening of the school period for children. I do not think it is possible accurately to compare the present length of this period with that which existed a century or a half ago; nor would such a comparison interest us. It is enough for our purpose to know that years have been added to the school life of many thousands of the youth of all classes. As a single illustration, consider the effect of the high school, whose development into a large and popular institution, an institution affecting great masses of the people, belongs almost wholly to the period within the life of the generation now on the stage. A half century ago the public high school was almost unknown and the private academy reached very few persons. Only a generation ago the number of students in secondary schools was hardly one-tenth of the present number. The attendance on institutions of secondary grade has thus increased five times as rapidly as the population. Within the past fifteen years the attendance in the high schools of Milwaukee has more than trebled, while only a little more than fifty per cent. has been added to the population of the city. In Racine almost exactly the same ratio holds, and so for many other cities of the United States, the increase being least marked in New England cities, and greatest in the cities of the West.

The formative influence of the high school youth are far more extensively and exclusively books than were those of his father or grandfather, who probably began to learn his trade, or his business, at about the age when his boy enters the high school, and who therefore, during the period of adolescence, received his training from action rather than from study, from oral rather than from printed experience.

One may find to-day in the writings of many teachers jeremiads over the shortness of the average school life of children. I would not contradict their statistics and would join in their regrets, but the fact remains that the most striking phenomenon in the life of the children of the past thirty years is the extent to which their training has been committed to the use of books and the rapid growth of the use of books as the period has advanced. Few as the school years of the children now are, those of any older generation have been fewer. This aspect of the matter is the one that is of interest to us, and the school life of the present, instead of arousing our regrets by its brevity, may well call out our astonishment by its length, and demand the use of our best wits to see the changes which have been caused in the life of the present and to forecast those which in the future will flow from this fundamental change in education.

One of these correlated changes is already apparent--the extension of the period of book learning for many thousands of persons into the college and university course.

In 1850 the total attendance on colleges in the United States was about ten thousand. Half a century later, when the population of the country had increased about three and one-third times, the college students had increased in a tenfold ratio, or more than three times as rapidly as the population. Even more significant is the growth of the number of college students in more recent years. Since 1889 the number has more than doubled, thus continuing in the latest years a ratio of growth with reference to population quite as great as in earlier years.

An equally significant, and quite as conspicuous change, is seen in the growth of technical education. Thirty years ago, when I came to Wisconsin, the university was graduating from two or three and a half dozen engineers yearly, and these could not all find occupation in this commonwealth, with a population then of more than a million people. Now a hundred graduates go out at Commencement, while the population of the state has little more than doubled, and while other engineering schools of high rank have multiplied all around it.

Nowadays the man of books, rather than the man of tradition is directing the work of the world. In the copper mines of the north the old-fashioned mine captain, who received his profession and his traditions from his father, is disappearing and has almost vanished. His place is taken by the graduate of a mining school, who interprets what he sees, not by the light of the experience of his elders, communicated to him orally, but by the far clearer light of the collective experience of men embodied in books.

When the capitalist now desires to explore for new iron mines he employs not the old-fashioned prospector, but puts into the field a party of young men often fresh from the geological laboratory. Thus science, organized knowledge, book learning, is driving out with increasing rapidity the picturesque figures of past times--times wholly past, though only just behind us in years. That "bookish theoric," so detested by Iago, is apparently firmly in control of affairs and has displaced its predecessors and rivals.

In countless other ways the same fact is shown. Half a century ago a youth who desired to become a lawyer or a doctor entered the office of a practitioner and learned his profession by practise and experience. Now he goes to the school of law or medicine and gains his entrance to his chosen calling by the way of books and laboratories. Even commerce and trade, in which the rules of practical experience seem most firmly entrenched, are shifting their basis to books, and schools of commerce and trade schools are springing up on every hand to give youth a broader foundation of knowledge than can be gained from practise. Still more significant are the facts shown by the enormous development of agricultural experiment stations, farmers' bulletins and farmers' institutes. Agriculture, that calling which of all others is most ancient and most conservative, is rapidly changing its basis from tradition to books. Perhaps I ought not to say "most conservative," for there is one calling which may better deserve the title--that of the domestic industries practised by women. Yet even here a beginning of the transfer, although a small one, has been made by schools of domestic science.

While this beginning is but small, and while the traditional professions of women have not yet been greatly modified by books, the life of no class of the community has been more profoundly affected by this general change than has that of women. With the passing away of home industries and with the great increase of wealth which the past century, or half century, has seen, have come vastly increased opportunities to women for leisure, for release from domestic duties, and for the prolongation of school life. The statistics of high schools and colleges sufficiently show the use which they are making of this leisure. Other facts are equally obvious and significant as showing the transfer of the basis of woman's life from domestic experience to books. The woman's club, I suppose, may be said fairly to take the place of the sewing circle of our mothers and grandmothers. The contrast even in the name is significant, as marking the transfer of interest from the circle of domestic experience to the wider domain of the recorded life of the world, to the realm of books.

Thus at whatever point we examine the life of the present, we find it basing itself on books, both for action and enjoyment, and that in an ever-increasing degree. This truth is peculiarly evident to you as librarians, since the facts of your own profession and the rapid growth of libraries and library work afford one of the latest phases of this general movement.

From 1875 to 1896 the number of libraries in the United States just about doubled, increasing steadily, and adding, during this period, about 2,000 libraries, or a little less than 100 per year. From 1896 to 1900, 1,350 libraries were added, or about 450 per year. From 1900 to 1903, 1,500 libraries were founded, or 500 per year. In the past ten years the number of libraries must have doubled; a ratio growth at least four times that of the population....

It is plain that the adjustment of the library to this movement of men's minds towards books is the most important practical question for all of us. Questions of management, of administration, of methods are all of secondary importance beside this one--if, indeed they may be called even secondary. For this change of base is a revolutionary affair, not a mere matter of readjustment of detail, and it is no easy task for the library to find itself in such a movement. Libraries are so small a part of the national intellectual life, so small, in the mass, for example, in comparison to the great universities, that their proper influence and work are easily overlooked. There is sometimes danger that they may be swept into currents guided by other forces rather than find opportunity freely to contribute their own share to the movement.

Let us turn then to the more practical side of the question, and ask how the library is adjusting itself, in this changed relation of men, where it has best succeeded, and where it still has most to do. Let us ask where experience seems to promise successful solution of problems, and where the problems are in that stage in which only doubtful success can be expected from experiments, and final solution still lies far before us.

The library began as a place to keep books, permitting their use by the public, but often under such restrictions as seem to indicate that this service was granted "grudgingly and of necessity." Books and the high life were in some obscure way correlated in the mind of the librarian, and he too often seemed to feel that these were treasures not to be shared by the many. The first change which came, therefore, as the library was swept into the general intellectual current of time, was the removal of restrictions on the use of books and their replacement by devices intended to encourage and extend that use. A second step, and a much more revolutionary one, has been to teach the community directly the uses of books, and thus not merely to afford easy conditions for the use of books on the part of those who want them, but to add a positive force which will compel the books to go out in the community, there to perform their present service and to create a demand for an increased service in the future.

This change marks a fundamental departure of the library from its old basis, and one which will affect it greatly, for good and perhaps for