The Library and Society: Reprints of Papers and Addresses
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Title: The Library and Society: Reprints of Papers and Addresses
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Classics of American Librarianship
Edited by
ARTHUR E. BOSTWICK, Ph. D.
THE LIBRARY AND SOCIETY
Reprints of Papers and Addresses
With Notes by ARTHUR E. BOSTWICK, Ph. D.
New York
The H. W. Wilson Company
London: Grafton & Company
1920
Published, January, 1921
PREFACE
It may be desirable to repeat here the warning that the word "classics"
in the title of this series is to be understood as meaning early and
standard expressions of ideas that have later developed into prominence.
The papers and addresses in this volume have been chosen especially with
this in view, and as they emphasize social relations an effort has been
made to include expressions from men of eminence whose names would not
probably occur to the student of library economy as having expressed an
opinion about the work of libraries or as having influenced it in any
permanent way.
I desire to acknowledge the kindly assistance rendered in the selection
and grouping of the articles by Mrs. Gertrude Gilbert Drury, chief
instructor in the St. Louis Library School. It has been most valuable.
The original suggestion of this volume, and of the character of its
contents, I owe to Dr. James I. Wyer, Jr., Director of the New York
State Library.
ARTHUR E. BOSTWICK
CONTENTS
PREFACE 5
THE LIBRARY AND SOCIETY 13
GENERAL COMMUNITY RELATIONS 15
The Historical Evolution of the Free Public Library in
America and Its True Function in the Community; Dedication
Address at Sage Library. (_Library Journal_, 1884,
p. 40) 17
MOSES COIT TYLER.
The Library as a Field for Philanthropy. (Extract from
"The Best Fields for Philanthropy," _North American
Review_, December, 1889.) 33
ANDREW CARNEGIE.
The Idea of a Popular Library. ("Life, Letters, and Journals,"
Vol. 2, 1851.) 49
GEORGE TICKNOR.
The Function of a Town Library. ("Protection of Majorities,")
1875 55
JOSIAH P. QUINCY.
The Free Public Library. (Extract from "Men and Women,"
1888.) 63
THOMAS W. HIGGINSON.
Two Fundamentals. (_Library Journal_, 1896, p. 446.) 67
MARY SALOME CUTLER.
What a Library Should Be, and What It Can Do. (_Public
Libraries_, 1899, p. 269.) 75
MELVIL DEWEY
The Public Library in American Life. (_Library Journal_,
1905, p. 925.) 79
HUGO MUNSTERBERG.
Books and the Public Library; Dedication Address of Chelsea
Library. (_Library Journal_, 1886, p. 10.) 87
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
The Influence of Good Books; Dedication Address, Spencer
Library, Mass. (_Library Journal_, 1889, p. 380.) 101
ROBERT COLLYER.
Books and Life. (_Library Journal_, 1906, p. 203.) 109
EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE.
Address at the Dedication of the Boston Public Library.
("Orations and Speeches", Boston, 1859; Vol. III.) 127
EDWARD EVERETT.
Address at a Meeting in Favor of the New York Free Circulating
Library. (_Library Journal_, 1890, p. 107.) 139
GROVER CLEVELAND.
Addresses at the Opening of the Wadsworth Athenaeum Library,
Hartford, Conn. (_Library Journal_, 1893, p. 18.) 145
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.
CHARLES HOPKINS CLARK.
Libraries as Leaven; Dedication address, Madison Public
Library. (_American Bibliopolist_, 1875, p. 189.) 149
JAMES DAVIE BUTLER.
The Free Public Library. (_American Magazine of Civics_,
1895, p. 469.) 169
HENRY HERVEY BARBER.
THE COMMUNITY'S SERVICE TO THE LIBRARY 183
The Relation of the State to the Public Library. (_Transactions
of the Second International Library Conference_,
London, 1898, p. 19.) 185
MELVIL DEWEY.
Methods of Securing the Interest of a Community. (_Library
Journal_, 1880, p. 245.) 193
WILLIAM EATON FOSTER.
FINANCIAL SUPPORT 199
Free Libraries: An Argument against Public Support.
("A Plea for Liberty," ed. by Thos. Mackay, 3rd ed.,
London, 1894, p. 260.) 201
M.D. O'BRIEN.
Arguments for Public Support of Public Libraries: a Rejoinder
to the Foregoing. (_Library Journal_, 1891, p. 39,
Conference No.) 215
WILLIAM EATON FOSTER.
Public Libraries and the Public, with Special References to
San Francisco. (_Library Journal_, 1885, p. 223.) 231
FREDERIC BEECHER PERKINS.
The Levy of Library Tribute; Presidential Address to the
A.L.A. (_Library Journal_, 1895, Conference No., p. 1.) 243
HENRY MUNSON UTLEY.
ALTERNATIVES TO TAX SUPPORT 251
If Not a Tax-Supported Library--What? (_Iowa Library
Quarterly_, April, 1903, p. 21.) 253
ANONYMOUS.
Cooperation Between Library and Community. (University
of New York, Home Education Bulletin 31, p. 131.) 257
M. ANNA TARBELL.
BOARDS OF TRUSTEES 265
Library Work from the Trustees' Standpoint. (_Library Journal_,
1890, Conference No., p. 23.) 267
JOHN CALVIN LEARNED.
Trustees of Free Public Libraries. (_Library Journal_, 1890,
Conference No., p. 19.) 271
CHARLES CARROLL SOULE.
Duties of Trustees and Their Relations to Libraries. (_Library
Journal_, 1890, Conference No., p. 24.) 279
SAMUEL SWETT GREEN.
THE LIBRARY'S SERVICE TO THE COMMUNITY 285
Some Popular Objections to Public Libraries. (_Library
Journal_, 1876, p. 45.) 287
WILLIAM FREDERICK POOLE.
How to Use a Library: Addresses at Pittsfield, Mass. (_Library
Journal_, 1884, p. 25.) 297
JAMES MASCARENE HUBBARD.
Adaptation of Libraries to Constituencies; World's Library
Congress, Chicago Exposition. (Education Bureau Report,
Chap. IX., Part II, p. 658, 1892-93.) 307
SAMUEL SWETT GREEN.
Relation of Free Public Libraries to the Community. (_North
American Review_, 1898, p. 660.) 315
HERBERT PUTNAM.
The Public Library: Its Uses to the Municipality. (_Library
Journal_, 1903, p. 293.) 329
JOHN SHAW BILLINGS.
The Library: a Plea for Its Recognition. (International
Congress of Arts and Science, St. Louis Exposition.
_Library Journal_, 1904, Conference No., p. 1.) 333
FREDERICK MORGAN CRUNDEN.
The Library as a Factor in Modern Civilization. (_Library
Journal_, 1906, Conference No., p. 18.) 343
WILLIAM HERBERT PERRY FAUNCE.
THE PROVISION OF BOOKS 349
The Librarian and His Constituents. (_Library Journal_,
1886, p. 229.) 351
REUBEN BROOKS POOLE.
The Usefulness of Libraries in Small Towns. (_Library
Journal_, 1883, p. 227.) 359
THERESA HUBBELL WEST.
Address at the Dedication of the University of Pennsylvania
Library. (_Library Journal_, 1891, p. 108.) 365
TALCOTT WILLIAMS.
COLLECTION OF INFORMATION 379
Libraries As Bureaus of Information. (_Library Journal_,
1896, p. 324.) 381
SAMUEL SWETT GREEN.
The Library Friend. (_Library Journal_, 1901, p. 197.) 387
WINIFRED LOUISE TAYLOR.
CONTROL AND GUIDANCE OF READING 395
Probable Intellectual and Moral Outcome of the Rapid Increase
of Public Libraries. (_Library Journal_, 1885, p.
234.) 397
BRADFORD KINNEY PIERCE.
Possibilities of Public Libraries in Manufacturing Communities.
(_Library Journal_, 1887, p. 395.) 401
MINERVA AMANDA SANDERS.
Presidential Address, Lake Placid Conference. (_Library
Journal_, 1894, Conference No., p. 1.) 411
JOSEPH NELSON LARNED.
The Library as an Inspirational Force. (_Public Libraries_,
1899, p. 102.) 419
SAM WALTER FOSS.
The Use of the Public Library; Ryerson Library Dedication
Address. (_Library Journal_, 1904, p. 592.) 425
JAMES BURRILL ANGELL.
COMMUNITY CENTER SERVICE 431
The Library as a Social Centre. (_Public Libraries_, 1906,
p. 5.) 433
GRATIA ALTA COUNTRYMAN.
The Library and the Social Centre. (_Wisconsin Library
Bulletin_, 1911, p. 84.) 439
LUTIE EUGENIA STEARNS.
Where Neighbors Meet. (From St. Louis Public Library
report, 1916-17.) 443
MARGERY CLOSEY QUIGLEY.
What of the Future? (_Library Journal_, 1897, Conference
No., p. 5.) 453
FREDERICK MORGAN CRUNDEN.
INDEX 459
THE LIBRARY AND SOCIETY
Recent progress in all directions--political, educational,
industrial, hygienic--has been marked by the growth and
strengthening of a social consciousness. It is this chiefly
that has differentiated the modern library from its
predecessors and has made prominent our present insistence
on the reader as well as the book, as a fundamental element
in what we are doing. At first evident only in a general and
somewhat vague recognition, by writers and speakers, of a
vital relation between libraries and the communities that
they serve, it later crystallized into definite discussions
of their reciprocal service--that of the community to the
library, consisting of financial, material and moral support
expressing itself partly in the appointment of adequate
boards of trustees and their proper backing, and that of the
library to the community, showing itself largely in the
provision of books, the collection of information, the
control and guidance of reading, and so-called
"community-centre" service. These facts have guided the
grouping and sequence of the papers and addresses that make
up the present volume. The authors, it will be noticed,
include more statesmen, publicists, and professional men,
and fewer librarians, than was the case with the two
previous volumes, thus reflecting the greater generality and
wider interest of the subject.
GENERAL COMMUNITY RELATIONS
In the following group have been included papers and
addresses largely by publicists or educators interested in
libraries from the general civic standpoint, and affected by
the general trend toward what has been termed here
"socialization." They have been loosely arranged in three
groups--general ideas on the field, function and
possibilities of the library, papers on books and their
uses, as affected or promoted by the library, and general
addresses, chiefly at the opening of library buildings.
Within these groups they are given in general in their
chronological order, although with some exceptions whose
purpose will be self evident. Through them all runs the
thread of consciousness that service to the community must
be the primary object of the library, although the breadth
and extent of that service, as it was destined later to grow
and develop is not generally realized and in some cases
doubtless would have been deprecated by the writers or
speakers, could they have foreseen it. But in all these
pronouncements we may clearly see the dawning light of a new
library day.
THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY IN
AMERICA AND ITS TRUE FUNCTION IN THE COMMUNITY
This comprehensive sketch, by Professor Tyler of Cornell
University, forms part of an address delivered at the
dedication of the Sage Library, at West Bay City, Michigan,
Jan. 16, 1884.
Moses Coit Tyler was born in Griswold, Conn., Aug. 2, 1835
and graduated at Yale in 1857. He was professor of English
at Michigan University in 1867-81 and from the latter year
to his death, Dec. 28, 1900, held the chair of American
History at Cornell.
In this address, Prof. Tyler has added to his equipment as a
philosophical historian his personal knowledge and
experience of the service that a properly administered
collection of books may render to a community.
Looking over the entire course of American society, from its rough and
hardy beginning, in the first years of the 17th century, I find six
distinct stages of development with reference to the possession and use
of books by the people. The first stage is that of private libraries;
the second is that of special institutional libraries, like those of
colleges and other learned corporations, and intended for a limited and
rather scholastic class in the community; the third is that of
association or joint stock libraries, _i.e._, libraries of a more
miscellaneous and general character, but for the use only of those whose
names are on the subscription list; the fourth is that of common school
libraries; the fifth is that of endowed libraries, _i.e._, public
libraries founded and sustained entirely by private endowment and thrown
open to the public without any cost whatever to the public; and finally,
the sixth is that of free public libraries created, it may be, by
private benefaction, but sustained in part at least at the public cost,
_i.e._, uniting the two elements of private help and public selfhelp,
and cherished by the public only as people will cherish that which costs
them something, and of which they have some sense of real ownership.
But before proceeding to inspect these successive forms of library
evolution, the fact should be distinctly brought out as applicable to
them all, that the American people started on their career in this
country with an uncommon interest in books; and say what one will about
American philistinism and American devotion to the practical, this
people have always retained that ancient and primitive homage for books.
To an extent, I think, unapproached elsewhere, they are, and they always
have been, a bookish people. In some other nations there is,
undoubtedly, a larger leisurely class; and among persons of that class
there is a profounder and more extensive contact with books than is the
case with us. But while among most other nations, the craving for books
is the propensity of one class, with us it may be fairly described as
the propensity of all classes. A certain tincture of bookishness has
pervaded the American people from the beginning. Perhaps the most
decided quality of American civilization has been its effort to unite
the practical with the ideal; its passion for material results ennobled
by the intellectual and the spiritual; its fine reverence for
studiousness, even amid the persistent fury of dollar-hunting.
And not only was this bookish trait visible in our colonial infancy but
it may be said to have had an ante-natal origin. The two Englishmen who
in the latter half of the 16th century did most to make possible the
birth of American civilization in the first half of the 17th, were Sir
Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh; and both were men possessed by
this large zest for ideas as well as for deeds; both were contemplative
men as well as active men. The last glimpse that any surviving mortal
had of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, before his ship went down in the sea, was
of that stern hero sitting calmly on the deck, with a book in his hand,
cheering his companions by telling them that heaven is as near by water
as by land; and the last labor of Sir Walter Raleigh, before his
judicial murder in the Tower, was to write one of the learnedest and
stateliest books to be met with in the literature of modern men.
And this flavor of bookishness which belonged to these two great
pioneers and martyrs of American colonization, seems to have passed on
to the men who successfully executed the grand project in which they had
failed. When you run your eyes along the sturdy list of the great
colony-founders of the 17th century--the men who carried out the fierce
task of conveying English civilization across the Atlantic, and of
making it take root and live in this wild soil--Captain John Smith, and
William Bradford, and Winslow, and Robert Cushman, and the Winthrops,
and Dudley, and Hooker, and Davenport, and Roger Williams, and William
Penn, you will find them all, in some special sense, lovers of books,
collectors of books, readers of books, even writers of books.
And what is true of the leaders of that great act of national
transmigration is true also of the men of less note who followed in it.
The first American immigrants were reading immigrants--immigrants who
brought in their hands not only axes and shovels, but books. Their
coming hither was due to the restlessness inflicted by the possession of
ideas. Books were to them a necessary part of the outfit for the voyage
and the settlement. And so rare and so precious were books in those days
that they were cherished as family treasures, and handed down as
heirlooms; nay, they were so dealt with in wills and in contracts as if
they rose almost to the dignity of real estate. In fact, in those days,
the possession of an unusual number of books, with the reputation of
using them, constituted a sort of patent of gentility, and seemed to
bridge the chasm between the most widely separated classes in society;
as when, in 1724, a young mechanic, named Benjamin Franklin, arriving in
New York on a sloop from Newport, is invited to the house of the
Governor of New York and is honored by him with a long and friendly
interview, for no other reason than that the captain of the sloop had
told the governor of a lad on his vessel who had with him "a great many
books." "The governor received me," says Franklin in his autobiography
"with great civility, showed me his library, which was a considerable
one, and we had a good deal of conversation relative to books and
authors. This was the second governor who had done me the honor to take
notice of me, and for a poor boy, like me, it was very pleasing." So I
think I am justified in saying that we started on our career as a people
with this underlying intellectual quality--a pretty general respect for
books, love for them, habit of using them; and this is the impelling
moral force which prompts to the several efforts which society has made
for providing itself with books. Now, the first stage in the process of
library evolution--and I have called it that of private libraries--was
the prevailing condition of the American colonies during the whole of
the 17th century and the first third of the 18th. This is the picture:
Everywhere books, but few, costly, portly, solemn, revered, read over
and over again; every respectable family, however poor, having at least
a few hereditary treasures in the form of books, as in that of silver
and choice furniture; and here and there up and down the colonies, an
occasional luminous spot, drawing to itself the wide-eyed wonder of the
surrounding inhabitants, the seat of a great private library, belonging
to some country gentleman, or clergyman, or publicist, like that of
Colonel William Bird, of Westover, or of the Reverend James Blair, of
Williamsburg, or of Dr. Cotton Mather, of Boston, or of James Logan, of
Philadelphia, or of Cadwallader Colden, of New York.
This is the first stage of library evolution. And, of course, it has its
pleasant aspects; but surely there is here no adequate provision for the
intellectual wants of the entire community. Very few persons in any
community are rich enough to buy and own all the books they ought to
have access to; and the existence of great private libraries in a few
wealthy households can no more supply this general need of books than
the great private dinners which are given in the same households can
keep the entire community from going hungry.
Accordingly, the second stage in the evolution of libraries is away
from mere private ownership and use, and is toward complete public
ownership and use; but it stops far this side of it; it is the stage of
special scholastic libraries, collected by colleges and other learned
corporations, and intended for the particular use of the learned
class--students, investigators, and specialists. The earliest library of
that sort ever formed in this country was begun at Harvard College in
1638; near the close of the 17th century, another was begun at William
and Mary College, and still another at Yale; thenceforward, and
especially during the past eighty years, such libraries have been
multiplying in the land, so that at the present moment there are more
than three hundred of them, and a few of them are now really vast
library collections. The value of these libraries--who can doubt? Yet
their direct value is only for a class; they are scholars' libraries,
not people's libraries. This will not suffice; society cannot rest
satisfied, and will not rest satisfied until everywhere good books for
all are placed within the reach of all. The complete popularization of
books is the goal.
So we come to the third stage of library evolution--that of libraries
gathered and controlled by voluntary associations of people, _e.g._,
joint stock associations, but of course for the use only of those who
subscribe to them and share in the expense.
Here we have a natural step forward; a goodly step; a step in the right
direction, but still not far enough. We shall all agree that this is the
strong and hearty modern method of doing difficult things--the method of
clubbing together to do something; it is self-reliant, social,
cooperative, mutually, helpful, What the individual cannot do alone a
club of individuals can do together. Thus the hardest and grandest
achievements of our time have been brought about--vast railroads, vast
manufacturing and commercial enterprises. And so men and women, who
could not singly get the books they wanted, have joined forces and have
got them by combination.
It is a notable fact, however, that this third stage of library
evolution was not reached until more than a hundred years after the
first colonies had been settled.
Many of you, doubtless, in wandering about Philadelphia--perhaps during
our great centennial visit to that city--may have noticed the venerable
building of the Philadelphia Library company, and in the walls of it an
old tablet with this inscription: "Be it remembered in honor of the
Philadelphia youth (then chiefly artificers) that, in 1731, they
cheerfully, at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin, one of their number,
instituted the Philadelphia Library, which though small at first, is
become highly valuable and extensively useful, and which the walls of
this building are now destined to contain and preserve." Now, in
reality, that year 1731, when that first subscription library was
started in America, begins a new epoch in the intellectual life of the
American people, the epoch of systematic cooperation for the procurement
by the people of the great intellectual and spiritual boon of books.
Immense results have followed from that example set in 1731. Therefore,
let us stop a moment longer, and listen to Benjamin Franklin's own
account of the way in which he came to think of that capital project.
"At the time I established myself in Pennsylvania, there was not a good
bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the southward of Boston.
Those who loved reading were obliged to send for their books from
England; the members of the Junto had each a few. We had left the
alehouse, where we first met, and hired a room to hold our club in. I
proposed that we should all of us bring our books to that room; where
they would not only be ready to consult in our conferences, but become a
common benefit, each of us being at liberty to borrow such as he wished
to read at home. This was accordingly done, and for some time contented
us. Finding the advantage of this little collection, I proposed to
render the benefit from the books more common by commencing a public
subscription library. I drew a sketch of the plan and rules that would
be necessary, and got a skilful conveyancer to put the whole in form of
articles of agreement to be subscribed; by which each subscriber engaged
to pay a certain sum down for the first purchase of the books and an
annual contribution for increasing them. So few were the readers at that
time in Philadelphia, and the majority of us so poor, that I was not
able with great industry to find more than fifty persons, mostly young
tradesmen, willing to pay down for this purpose forty shillings each and
ten shillings per annum. With this little fund we began. The books were
imported; the library was opened one day in the week for lending them to
the subscribers, on their promissory notes to pay double the value if
not duly returned. The institution soon manifested its utility, was
imitated by other towns and in other provinces. The libraries were
augmented by donations; reading became fashionable; and our people,
having no public amusements to divert their attention from study, became
better acquainted with books; and in a few years were observed by
strangers to be better instructed, and more intelligent, than people of
the same rank generally are in other countries."
I think you will agree with me that this is a very striking bit of
testimony, too much so to permit us to hurry past it. Note these few
things about it.
In the first place, that device of Franklin's, started in 1731--what
does it really signify in our history? It signifies this. It signifies a
new departure for mankind--the application of the democratic spirit to
the distribution of intellectual advantages. These things called
books--these bewitched and bewitching fabrics of paper and ink, which
somehow contain the accumulated thought of all nations and of all
centuries, and can communicate to us the noblest pleasures and the most
godlike powers--these potent things, in all the ages before, had been
accessible only to some few fortunate human beings--to a privileged
class--to rich men who wished them--to scholars who could win their way
to them--in short, to an aristocracy of intellectual privileges. But in
1731, by that modest device of Benjamin Franklin, the democratic
spirit--the modern humane spirit--the spirit which in its true nature is
a levelling spirit only in this grand sense that it levels upward and
not downward, and raises the general average of human intelligence and
felicity--this benign and mighty democratic spirit, I say, which was
then marching with gentle but invincible footsteps along all avenues and
pathways of modern life, and was laying its miraculous touch on church
and state, on kings and priests and peasants, on the laws and law-makers
and law-breakers, on all the old activities of society, on the old
adjustments of human relations, that spirit then began to touch this
relation also, the relation of man to the superb and royal realm of
books. And the first effect of that touch was what? It was enlargement,
liberalization, extension of intellectual opportunity for man simply as
man. Hitherto books had been the privilege of the privileged class. In
effect, Franklin says: They shall be so no more. In this year 1731 I set
agoing a device concerning books which shall abolish the privileged
class by making all classes privileged, and shall finally result in
placing the blessings of books within the reach of all.
But, in the second place, in that year 1731, who was Franklin who did
all that, and who were the persons who helped to do it? He and they were
young men; obscure men, poor men, laboring men; mechanics and tradesmen
of the town where they lived; young men just getting a start in the
world. So this new era in the brain life of the American people had its
beginning with such as they were. Who of us, therefore, however modest
be our lot in life, has any right to say to himself, "I am not in
position to do anything for the advancement of my race"? Nay; my
brother, think of young Ben Franklin, the printer, and his 50 brother
mechanics; remember what they accomplished; and do not despair of being
useful in your time also. And in the third place, this movement came
from those young men associated together in a social debating club. It
was their experience in the actual discussion of the problems of human
thought which made them feel the need of books and suggested this great
measure for popularizing books: a fact which fits in well with Mr.
Sage's idea of blending the two things together here; of giving
perpetual house-room and hospitality to a debating club, here, in the
very midst of this library. And now the fourth point is, that the plan
started by Franklin and those other young mechanics in Philadelphia, in
1731, the plan of joint-stock library associations, worked so well there
that, as Franklin tells, it was taken up in other provinces. Naturally,
the new plan was adopted first in the towns where it was heard of
first--the towns nearest to Philadelphia. But before many years, the
news of it had travelled far, to the southward and the northward, and
whether consciously or unconsciously the model set up in Philadelphia,
was imitated, with more or less closeness, in scores of places far away.
One curious example springs up in South Carolina. It is in the
Georgetown district, then given to the growth of indigo. A number of the
planters came together and formed the Winyaw Indigo Society. Their chief
business was to have a pleasant time together and talk indigo; they paid
their initiation fees in indigo; they paid their annual dues in indigo;
and presently they found their treasury so full and overflowing with
indigo, that they resolved to devote their surplus in part to the
formation of the Indigo Society Library. Then, too, at about the same
time in Charleston, seventeen young men, of very limited means, desirous
of seeing the best and freshest English magazines, formed a club for
that purpose, and started with a fund of ten pounds sterling, not
venturing at first to hope to be able to purchase books also. Soon,
however, their plan grew and took in books; and from this small
beginning arose the great "Library Society" of Charleston, which has
ministered to the pleasure and benefit of the people of that place for
nearly a century and a half.
But the Philadelphia plan travelled northward as well as southward. In
1747, at Newport, Rhode Island, was formed, also out of a discussion
club, the famous Redwood Library, which lives and flourishes still. In
1753 the Providence Library was started on the same general plan; in
1754, the New York Society Library; in 1760, the Social Library at
Salem, Massachusetts; in 1763, similar libraries at Lancaster and at
Portland, Maine; in 1753, a similar one at Hingham; and so on throughout
the country.
One of the most curious of these joint-stock library associations was
one formed in 1751 in three parishes in the towns of York and Kittery,
Maine, and called the "Revolving Library." It was not a circulating
library--that being the name of a library from which the books circulate
singly and in units; but it was called a "revolving library" because the
entire library was to revolve, in bulk, on its own axes, in an orbit
including the parsonages of the three parishes embraced in the scheme.
And thus this library began to revolve from parsonage to parsonage more
than 130 years ago; and it has been revolving ever since, occasionally
encountering some queer experiences, as when, about 15 years ago, it was
found by the new pastor of Kittery Point in the garret of the parsonage,
"dumped down on the attic floor like a load of coal," the wife of the
former incumbent having had a prejudice against books for sanitary
reasons, "considering them unhealthy, and so being unwilling to have
them in any living room" where their presence might communicate diseases
to the family.
This, of course, is a rather eccentric specimen of the class of
libraries now under view. A very good normal example of the class is
furnished us by the social library of Castine, Maine, organized in 1801;
and its articles of association I desire to read to you as exhibiting
the scope and spirit of this whole movement for supplying the public
with books through jointstock companies. The articles of association are
as follows: "It is proposed by the persons whose names are here
subjoined to establish a social library in this town. It is greatly to
be lamented that excellent abilities are not unfrequently doomed to
obscurity by reason of poverty; that the rich purchase almost everything
but books; and that reading has become so unfashionable an amusement in
what we are pleased to call this enlightened age and country. To remedy
these evils; to excite a fondness for books; to afford the most rational
and profitable amusement; to prevent idleness and immorality; and to
promote the diffusion of useful knowledge, piety, and virtue, at an
expense which small pecuniary abilities can afford, we are induced to
associate for the above purposes; and each agrees to pay for the number
of shares owned, and annexed to his name at $5 per share."
The first public library in the north-west was established by an
association formed at Marietta, Ohio, in 1796. Then followed similar
libraries at Cincinnati, and at Ames, Athens County. The latter, which
was formed as early as 1802, had a curious origin. It was popularly
known as the "Coon-skin Library." The hardy pioneers of that township of
Ames met together, it seems, to consider the subject of roads; and,
having considered it, they proceeded to consider also the subject of
books--a fine illustration, I think, of the blending of the practical
and the ideal in the American character and in American civilization.
Here were these sturdy pioneers projecting a public library even before
they had got their public roads cut out and put in order. What is called
money hardly existed among them; but they knew how to shoot bears and to
catch coons and to take their skins, and these skins could be sent to
Boston and sold for cash, and the money invested in books. This
accordingly was done. The noted politician, Thomas Ewing, then a boy at
Ames, gives this account of the affair: "All my accumulated wealth, ten
coon-skins, went into the fund," the total amount of which proved to be
about $100. "Squire Sam Brown, of Sunday Creek, who was going to Boston,
was charged with the purchase. After an absence of many weeks, he
brought the books to Capt. Ben Brown's, in a sack on a pack-horse. I was
present at the untying of the sack and pouring out of the treasures.
There were about 60 volumes, I think, and well selected; the library of
the Vatican was nothing to it, and there never was a library better
read. This, with occasional additions, furnished me with reading while I
remained at home."
That is the stuff of which strong men are made, and strong communities,
and mighty nations. And what was done at Marietta, and at Cincinnati,
and at Ames, was done in a multitude of other towns all over the
north-west. At Vincennes, Indiana, a library was started by similar
means in 1807; and one of the founders was Gen. Wm. Henry Harrison, the
hero of Tippecanoe and hard cider. That was the first public library
established in Indiana.
So, too, in Michigan, far back in its territorial days, similar
libraries were formed, especially that of the Young Men's Society of
Detroit. But in Michigan, by far the greatest service in this direction
has been rendered more recently by the ladies, whose admirable library
associations in such towns as Ann Arbor, Flint, and Kalamazoo have done
much, especially during the past twenty years, for the literary
improvement and enjoyment of the people.
But this third stage of library evolution, good and useful as it has
been during the past 150 years, has this defect: it does not offer books
freely to all who would like books; it is limited to those who
participate in its privileges by paying for them.
Therefore society pushed forward into a fourth stage of evolution--one
still nearer to the grand object to be reached--the complete
popularization of books. This fourth stage was reached chiefly through a
new idea entering into the case, namely, the duty of the state to help
in providing books for the people who compose the state. The principle
is already admitted that the state must educate its citizens, and for
that purpose must sustain schools. For the same purpose, and on the same
principle, it must sustain libraries; for these are but an annex to
schools, and the books in them are only a part of the necessary
apparatus for public education.
In this way was started the fourth plan, that of "district school
libraries," a plan which for a while was hailed with delight as a real
contribution to human progress and happiness; which was eagerly adopted
in this state and in many others; but which has, upon the whole,
resulted in failure.
The State of New York has the honor of having started this plan, which
was first publicly advocated by Governor De Witt Clinton, in his message
for 1826. In 1838 General John A. Dix, then secretary of state, was
"charged with the execution of the law giving to the school districts
$55,000 a year to buy books for their libraries, and requiring them to
raise by taxation an equal amount for same purpose." The system was
received throughout the state with enthusiastic favor. In 1841 the
school libraries of the state reported the possession of 422,459
volumes; in the following year, 200,000 volumes more; and in 1853 they
had reached the enormous number of 1,604,210 volumes.
The plan as advocated in New York soon passed over into Massachusetts,
where it was taken up and advocated by Horace Mann, that noble-minded
and eloquent champion of popular enlightenment. Through his influence
the necessary law was passed in 1837, but the operation of the plan was
never very successful in that state, and after twelve years had resulted
in the accumulation of only 42,707 volumes.
Michigan appears to have been abreast of Massachusetts in the adoption
of the plan of district school libraries, incorporating it into its
school law of 1837.
After New York, Massachusetts, and Michigan, the several other states
which adopted this plan did so in the following order: Connecticut in
1839; Rhode Island and Iowa in 1840; Indiana in 1841; Maine in 1844;
Ohio in 1847; Wisconsin in 1848; Missouri in 1853; California and Oregon
in 1854; Illinois in 1855; Kansas and Virginia in 1870; New Jersey in
1871; Kentucky and Minnesota in 1873; and Colorado in 1876.
These data will give you some idea of the wide extension of this fourth
stage in library evolution. Its merits are very great. Perhaps its
greatest merit is that it recognizes the true function of the public
library as a part of the system of public education, and therefore as
entitled to a share in public taxation. Moreover, it has undoubtedly
done a vast amount of good in placing the means of intellectual
improvement within the reach of millions of people of all ages; it has
stimulated the love of books and diffused knowledge and happiness. And
yet with all these merits, it has been a failure; and this is largely
due to just three defects in administration:
1. Lack of care and wisdom in the selection of the books, resulting in
the acquisition of many volumes of trash and of profligacy.
2. Lack of care as to the distribution and return of the books,
resulting in their rapid dispersion and disappearance.
3. Lack of care in the preservation of the books that were not strayed
and stolen, resulting in their rapid deterioration.
You have got to apply business principles to the handling of books, as
well as of any other material possessions. Libraries as well as sawmills
need to be dealt with according to common-sense and with efficiency. Now
upon the general failure of these libraries, let me quote for you a
little testimony. The superintendent of schools in New York State, in
1875, says: "The system has not worked well in this state.... The
libraries have fallen into disuse, and have become practically
valueless." [1 Pub. lib. of U.S., i. 41.]
The superintendent for 1861 says that in "nearly every quarter of the
state," the libraries are "almost totally unused and rapidly
deteriorating." [2 Pub. Lib. of U.S. i. 40.] For 1862, the
superintendent gives a more detailed picture of the condition of the
school libraries. He finds them "mainly represented by a motley
collection of books, ranging from 'Headley's sacred mountains' to the
'Pirate's own book,' numbering in the aggregate a million and a half of
volumes, scattered among the various families, constituting a part of
the family library, or serving as toys for children in the nursery; ...
crowded into cupboards, thrown into cellars, stowed away in lofts,
exposed to the action of water, the sun, and of fire, or more frequently
locked away into darkness unrelieved and silence unbroken." [2 Pub. Lib.
of U.S. i. 40.]
This graphic picture of the failure of the system in New York is perhaps
matched by a similar picture of its failure in Michigan, as drawn by our
superintendent of education in 1869:
"The books were distributed to the districts by the town clerk to be
returned by the directors every third month for exchange. This would now
require more than 60,000 miles' travel per annum, at a positive expense
to the directors, certainly, of $100,000, to say nothing of more than
10,000 days' time. This was like putting two locomotives ahead of each
other to draw a hand-car. The result was the books were generally hidden
away in the clerks' offices, like monks in their cloister, and valueless
to the world. And what kind of books were they? Some good ones,
doubtless; but generally it was better to sow oats in the dust that
covered those books than to give them to the young to read. Every year,
soon after the taxes were collected, the state swarmed with pedlers,
with all the unsalable books of Eastern houses--the sensational novels
of all ages, tales of piracies, murders, and love intrigues--the
yellow-covered literature of the world."
Finally, the superintendent for 1873 says: "The whole system seems to
have come into general disfavor; and is, more than any other feature of
our school system, the one of which we are least proud."
Now we come to the fifth stage in the evolution of libraries--that of
libraries fully endowed by private generosity, and thrown open to the
public on such conditions as the founders have been pleased to indicate;
sometimes called patronymic libraries. Notable specimens of this class
of libraries are the Astor, Cooper, and Lenox Libraries, of New York,
and the Peabody Library, of Baltimore. The note of this species of
library is this: it is for the use of the public entirely without cost
to the public. In short, it is a library completely endowed, not only as
to the original expense of its erection and equipment, but absolutely
for all subsequent expense in its increase and administration.
Concerning this species of library, I have this to say: It is a noble
use to make of private wealth; it does immense good; but it is not the
best final form of library evolution. And for two reasons: first, the
man who will completely endow a free public library does not arise in
every community; whereas, every community needs a free public library.
And, second, the wholesomest kind of a gift is not that which does it
all for the community and requires no exertion or sacrifice on their
part; but that which gives the community a good generous start, but
still leaves something for the community to do for itself. In other
words, the healthiest sort of help, whether for one man or for ten
thousand, is that help which helps a man to help himself.
And this brings us to the sixth and final form of library development.
It is the one which is the resultant of the two grand ideas; primarily,
the recognition of the free public library as an essential part of the
system of public education and therefore as a legitimate subject for
public taxation. This idea is essential to the most satisfactory form of
a public library--the public must invest something in it. But this idea
can adjust itself to that other noble one--private liberality in aid of
the public.
And it is in this final and most consummate form, combining private
help with public selfhelp, that many of the most successful libraries in
this country have been organized; and yet it is only since 1848 that
such libraries have been possible. For it was in 1848 that the first
state in our Union, Massachusetts, passed an act authorizing a
municipality to tax itself for the support of a free public library.
Since then many other states have followed with similar legislation. So
that it is only within the past thirty-five years that this grand result
has been reached: the systematic popularization of books under the
direction of the municipality, partially at least at the public expense,
and often in combination with private benefaction.
Now, it is this grand result that you have reached here in West Bay
City. The library which you to-day dedicate to the perpetual service of
the people, and which we may believe will continue as long as society
lasts here to do its serene and beneficient work for the instruction and
delight of innumerable generations of mankind--this library represents
the latest, and I think we may say the most perfect and the final term
in a process of library evolution, which has been going forward on this
continent for more than two hundred years, and has involved, as we have
seen, countless struggles and failures and sacrifices for the production
of this single result.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I venture to express the hope that this study
which we have now made of the process--the slow, costly, laborious
process--by which this brilliant result has been made possible and easy
for you, in West Bay City, is something which will enhance even your
pleasure in the acquisition of this noble library as well as your
appreciation of the princely act of Mr. Sage in his creative relation to
it?
I trust it may enhance also your feeling of responsibility for the
perpetual success of this library in the purposes for which it has been
formed. This library has been well organized; but the working of it will
depend upon you. It is on one side of it a business concern; and like
any other business concern it will go to wrack and ruin unless it is
conducted on sound business principles, accurate accounting, sharp
supervision, punctuality, system, order, promptitude, energy.
But more than ordinary business qualities are needed to make this
library all that it should be. Recognize the true function of the free
public library; it is a part of a large system of public education. It
is but a co-ordinate department of that larger institution for public
education--the people's university--including the ward schools and the
high schools. Some of the fruitfullest and best work of those schools
will be done in this library.
Then, too, the public library stands for the wholesome truth that
education is never finished and should not stop when one stops going to
school. The boy and the girl who graduate at the school do not desert
the library; they keep up and carry forward their intellectual training
by a post-graduate course in the public library, for the rest of their
lives.
Furthermore, the free public library supplements the work of the free
public schools by reaching those whom the schools never reached at all,
or only reached very slightly.
And that public library is never a complete success, in which is not
present in the officers a spirit of courtesy toward readers, of
sympathy, of cheerfulness, of patience, even of helpfulness. Don't
permit your library ever to be a dismal, bibliographical cave, in charge
of a dragon. Let it always be a bright and winsome place, hospitable to
all orderly people; a place where even those ill-informed about books
will not be made embarrassed, but encouraged. Let it be one of the most
attractive places in town; let it outshine in attractiveness the vulgar
and harmful attractions of the bar-room and the gambling den; let it
grow up into the best life of the community, a place resorted to by all,
loved by all, a blessing to all.
THE LIBRARY AS A FIELD FOR PHILANTHROPY
At a dinner given to Andrew Carnegie by the Authors' League
in New York, he said: "They say I am a philanthropist. I am
no such foolish fellow." Nevertheless, to the _North
American Review_ for December, 1889, he contributed an
article, entitled "The Best Fields for Philanthropy," in
which he gives the Library first place. It is of course
impossible to tell whether the title was his or a suggestion
of the editor. The extract printed here is interesting as
embodying Mr. Carnegie's gospel of "help by self-help," but
also as giving credit to Enoch Pratt of Baltimore as an
earlier exponent of it.
Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, Nov. 25,
1835. He was brought by his family to Pittsburgh, Pa. as a
boy of 13, and after working as a weaver's assistant and a
telegraph messenger boy, became an operator, rose to be head
of his division, made money by organizing a sleeping-car
company and after the Civil War became an ironmaster,
retiring in 1901 as a multi-millionaire. Much of his fortune
he gave to build libraries, almost always on the condition
that the municipality should assure them a stated support.
He died in New York, Aug. 11, 1919.
The reception given to the first paper[1] upon this subject, to which
our lamented friend, the late editor and proprietor of this _Review_,
was pleased to give the first place in the June number, has been most
encouraging to its author, as it would surely have been to the editor
had he been spared, for he was most deeply interested in the subject.
[1] "Wealth" by Andrew Carnegie. In the North American Review, June,
1889.
* * * * *
Before entering upon the question which you have proposed, it may be
advantageous to restate the positions taken in the former paper, for the
benefit of those who may not have read it, or who cannot conveniently
refer to it. It was assumed that the present laws of competition,
accumulation, and distribution are the best obtainable conditions; that
through these the race receives its most valuable fruits; and,
therefore, that they should be accepted and upheld. Under these it was
held that great wealth must inevitably flow into the hands of the few
exceptional managers of men. The question then arose, What should these
do with their surplus wealth? and the "Gospel of Wealth" contended that
surplus wealth should be considered as a sacred trust, to be
administered during the lives of its owners, by them as trustees, for
the best good of the community in which and from which it had been
acquired.
It was pointed out that there were but three modes of disposing of
surplus wealth, and two of these were held to be improper. First, it was
held that to leave great fortunes to children did not prove true
affection for them or interest in their genuine good, regarded either as
individuals or as members of the state; that it was not the welfare of
the children, but the pride of the parents, which inspired enormous
legacies, and that, looking to the usual results of vast sums conferred
upon children, the thoughtful man must be forced to say, if the good of
the child only were considered: "I would as soon leave to my son a curse
as to leave to him the almighty dollar."
The second mode open to men is to hoard their surplus wealth during
life, and leave it at death for public uses. It was pointed out that in
many cases these bequests become merely monuments of the testators'
folly; that the amount of real good done by posthumous gifts was
ridiculously disproportionate to the sums thus left. The recent decision
upon Mr. Tilden's will, which is said to have been drawn by the ablest
of lawyers, and the partial failure of Mr. Williamson's purposes in
regard to the great technical school which that millionaire intended to
establish in Philadelphia, are lessons indeed for the rich who only
bequeath.
The aim of the first article was thus to lead up to the conclusion that
there is but one right mode of using enormous fortunes--namely, that the
possessors from time to time during their own lives so administer them
as to promote the permanent good of the communities from which they have
been gathered. It was held that public sentiment would soon say of one
who died possessed of millions of available wealth which he might have
administered: "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced."
The purpose of this article is to present some of the best methods of
performing this duty of administering surplus wealth for the good of the
people. The first requisite for a really good use of wealth by the
millionaire who has accepted the gospel which proclaims him only a
trustee of the surplus that comes to him, is to take care that the
purpose for which he spends it shall not have a degrading, pauperizing
tendency upon its recipients, and that his trust should be so
administered as to stimulate the best and most aspiring poor of the
community to further efforts for their own improvement. It is not the
irreclaimably destitute, shiftless, and worthless that it is truly
beneficial or truly benevolent to attempt to reach and improve. For
these there exists the refuge provided by the city or the state, where
they can be sheltered, fed, clothed, and kept in comfortable existence,
and--most important of all--where they can be isolated from the
well-doing and industrious poor, who are liable to be demoralized by
contact with these unfortunates. One man or woman who succeeds in living
comfortably by begging is more dangerous to society, and a greater
obstacle to the progress of humanity, than a score of wordy Socialists.
The individual administrator of surplus wealth has as his charge the
industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them,
but those who, being most anxious and able to help themselves, deserve
and will be benefited by help from others and the extension of their
opportunities at the hands of the philanthropic rich.
It is ever to be remembered that one of the chief obstacles which the
philanthropist meets in his efforts to do real and permanent good in
this world is the practice of indiscriminate giving; and the duty of the
millionaire is to resolve to cease giving to objects that are not proved
clearly to his satisfaction to be deserving. He must remember Mr. Rice's
belief, that nine hundred and fifty out of every thousand dollars
bestowed to-day upon so-called charity had better be thrown into the
sea. As far as my experience of the wealthy extends, it is unnecessary
to urge them to give of their superabundance in charity so-called.
Greater good for the race is to be achieved by inducing them to cease
impulsive and injurious giving. As a rule, the sins of millionaires in
this respect are not those of omission, but of commission, because they
will not take time to think, and chiefly because it is much easier to
give than to refuse. Those who have surplus wealth give millions every
year which produce more evil than good, and which really retard the
progress of the people, because most of the forms in vogue to-day for
benefiting mankind only tend to spread among the poor a spirit of
dependence upon alms, when what is essential for progress is that they
should be inspired to depend upon their own exertions. The miser
millionaire who hoards his wealth does less injury to society than the
careless millionaire who squanders his unwisely, even if he does so
under cover of the mantle of sacred charity. The man who gives to the
individual beggar commits a grave offence, but there are many societies
and institutions soliciting alms which it is none the less injurious to
the community to aid. These are as corrupting as individual beggars.
Plutarch's "Morals" contains this lesson: "A beggar asking an alms of a
Lacedaemonian, he said: 'Well, should I give thee anything, thou wilt be
the greater beggar, for he that first gave thee money made thee idle,
and is the cause of this base and dishonorable way of living.'" As I
know them, there are few millionaires, very few indeed, who are clear of
this sin of having made beggars.
Bearing in mind these considerations, let us endeavor to present some of
the best uses to which a millionaire can devote the surplus of which he
should regard himself as only the trustee.
_First_--Standing apart by itself there is the founding of a university
by men enormously rich, such men as must necessarily be few in any
country. Perhaps the greatest sum ever given by an individual for any
purpose is the gift of Senator Stanford, who undertakes to establish
upon the Pacific coast, where he amassed his enormous fortune, a
complete university, which is said to involve the expenditure of ten
millions of dollars, and upon which he may be expected to bestow twenty
millions of his surplus. He is to be envied. A thousand years hence some
orator, speaking his praise upon the then crowded shores of the Pacific,
may repeat Griffith's eulogy of Wolsey, "In bestowing he was most
princely: ever witness for him this great seat of learning." Here is a
noble use of wealth.
We have many such institutions, Hopkins, Cornell, Packer, and others,
but most of these have only been bequeathed, and it is impossible to
extol any man greatly for simply leaving what he cannot take with him.
Cooper, and Pratt, and Stanford, and others of this class deserve credit
and the admiration of their fellows as much for the time and the
attention given during their lives, as for their expenditure, upon their
respective monuments.
We cannot have the Pacific coast in mind without recalling another
important work of a different character which has recently been
established there, the Lick Observatory. If any millionaire be
interested in the ennobling study of astronomy,--and there should be and
would be such if they but gave the subject the slightest
attention,--here is an example which could well be followed, for the
progress made in astronomical instruments and appliances is so great and
continuous that every few years a new telescope might be judiciously
given to one of the observatories upon this continent, the last being
always the largest and the best, and certain to carry further and
further the knowledge of the universe and of our relation to it here
upon the earth. As one among many of the good deeds of the late Mr.
Thaw, of Pittsburg, his constant support of the observatory there may be
mentioned. This observatory enabled Professor Langley to make his
wonderful discoveries. The professor is now at the head of the
Smithsonian Institution, a worthy successor to Professor Henry.
Connected with him was Mr. Brashear, of Pittsburg, whose instruments are
in most of the principal observatories of the world. He was a common
millwright, but Mr. Thaw recognized his genius and was his main support
through trying days. This common workman has been made a professor by
one of the foremost scientific bodies of the world. In applying part of
his surplus in aiding these two now famous men, the millionaire Thaw did
a noble work. Their joint labors have brought great, and are destined to
bring still greater, credit upon their country in every scientific
centre throughout the world.
It is reserved for very few to found universities, and, indeed, the use
for many, or perhaps any, new universities does not exist. More good is
henceforth to be accomplished by adding to and extending those in
existence. But in this department a wide field remains for the
millionaire as distinguished from the Croesus among milionaires. The
gifts to Yale University have been many, but there is plenty of room for
others. The School of Fine Arts, founded by Mr. Street, the Sheffield
Scientific School, endowed by Mr. Sheffield, and Professor Loomis's fund
for the observatory, are fine examples. Mrs. C.J. Osborne's building for
reading and recitation to be regarded with especial pleasure as being
the wise gift of a woman. Harvard University has not been forgotten; the
Peabody Museum, and the halls of Wells, Matthews, and Thayer may be
cited. Sever Hall is worthy of special mention, as showing what a genius
like Richardson could do with the small sum of a hundred thousand
dollars. The Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee, may be
mentioned as a true product of the gospel of wealth. It was established
by members of the Vanderbilt family during their lives--mark this vital
feature--during their lives; for nothing counts for much that is left by
a man at his death. Such funds are torn from him, not given by him. If
any millionaire is at a loss to know how to accomplish great and
indisputable good with his surplus, here is a field which can never be
fully occupied, for the wants of our universities increase with the
development of the country.
_Second_--The result of my own study of the question, What is the best
gift which can be given to a community? is that a free library occupies
the first place, provided the community will accept and maintain it as a
public institution, as much a part of the city property as its public
schools, and, indeed, an adjunct to these. It is, no doubt, possible
that my own personal experience may have led me to value a free library
beyond all other forms of beneficence. When I was a boy in Pittsburg,
Colonel Anderson, of Allegheny,--a name I can never speak without
feelings of devotional gratitude,--opened his little library of four
hundred books to boys. Every Saturday afternoon he was in attendance
himself at his house to exchange books. No one but he who has felt it
can know the intense longing with which the arrival of Saturday was
awaited, that a new book might be had. My brother and Mr. Phipps, who
have been my principal business partners through life, shared with me
Colonel Anderson's precious generosity, and it was when revelling in
these treasures that I resolved, if ever wealth came to me, that it
should be used to establish free libraries, that other poor boys might
receive opportunities similar to those for which we were indebted to
that noble man.
Great Britain has been foremost in appreciating the value of free
libraries for its people. Parliament passed an act permitting towns and
cities to establish and maintain these as municipal institutions, and
whenever the people of any town or city voted to accept the provisions
of the act, the authorities were authorized to tax the community to the
extent of one penny in the pound valuation. Most of the towns already
have free libraries under this act. Many of these are the gifts of rich
men, whose funds have been used for the building, and in some cases for
the books also, the communities being required to maintain and to
develop the libraries; and to this feature I attribute most of their
usefulness. An endowed institution is liable to become the prey of a
clique. The public ceases to take interest, in it, or, rather, never
acquires interest in it. The rule has been violated which requires the
recipients to help themselves. Everything has been done for the
community instead of its being only helped to help itself.
Many free libraries have been established in our country, but none that
I know of with such wisdom as the Pratt Library, of Baltimore. Mr. Pratt
presented to the city of Baltimore one million dollars, requiring it to
pay 5 per cent. per annum, amounting to fifty thousand dollars per year,
which is to be devoted to the maintenance and development of the library
and its branches. During the last year 430,217 books were distributed;
37,196 people of Baltimore are registered upon the books as readers; and
it is safe to say that 37,000 frequenters of the Pratt Library are of
more value to Baltimore, to the State, and to the country than all the
inert, lazy, and hopelessly-poor in the whole nation. And it may further
be safely said that, by placing within the reach of 37,000 aspiring
people books which they were anxious to obtain, Mr. Pratt has done more
for the genuine progress of the people than has been done by all the
contributions of all the millionaires and rich people to help those who
cannot help themselves. The one wise administrator of his surplus has
poured his fertilizing stream upon soil that was ready to receive it and
return a hundred-fold. The many squanderers have not only poured their
streams into sieves which never can be filled,--they have done worse;
they have poured them into stagnant sewers that breed the diseases which
afflict the body politic. And this is not all. The million dollars of
which Mr. Pratt has made so grand a use are something, but there is
something greater still. When the fifth branch library was opened in
Baltimore, the speaker said:
"Whatever may have been done in these four years, it was his
pleasure to acknowledge that much, very much, was due to the
earnest interest, the wise councils, and the practical
suggestions of Mr. Pratt. He never seemed to feel that the
mere donation of great wealth for the benefit of his
fellow-citizens was all that would be asked of him, but he
wisely labored to make its application as comprehensive and
effective as possible. Thus he constantly lightened burdens
that were, at times, very heavy, brought good cheer and
bright sunshine when clouds flitted across the sky, and made
every officer and employee feel that good work was
appreciated, and loyal devotion to duty would receive hearty
commendation."
This is the finest picture I have ever seen of any of the millionaire
class. As here depicted, Mr. Pratt is the ideal disciple of the "Gospel
of Wealth." We need have no fear that the mass of toilers will fail to
recognize in such as he their best leaders and their most invaluable
allies; for the problem of poverty and wealth, of employer and employed,
will be practically solved whenever the time of the few is given, and
their wealth is administered during their lives, for the best good of
that portion of the community which has not been burdened by the
responsibilities which attend the possession of wealth. We shall have no
antagonism between classes when that day comes, for the high and the
low, the rich and the poor, shall then indeed be brothers.
No millionaire will go far wrong in his search for one of the best forms
for the use of his surplus who chooses to establish a free library in
any community that is willing to maintain and develop it. John Bright's
words should ring in his ear: "It is impossible for any man to bestow a
greater benefit upon a young man than to give him access to books in a
free library." Closely allied to the library, and, where possible,
attached to it, there should be rooms for an art gallery and museum, and
a hall for such lectures and instruction as are provided in the Cooper
Union. The traveller upon the Continent is surprised to find that every
town of importance has its art gallery and museum; these may be large or
small, but in any case each has a receptacle for the treasures of the
locality, which is constantly receiving valuable gifts and bequests. The
free library and art gallery of Birmingham are remarkable among these,
and every now and then a rich man adds to their value by presenting
books, fine pictures, or other works of art. All that our cities require
to begin with is a proper fireproof building. Their citizens who travel
will send to it rare and costly things from every quarter of the globe
they visit, while those who remain at home will give or bequeath to it
of their treasures. In this way these collections will grow until our
cities will ultimately be able to boast of permanent exhibitions from
which their own citizens will derive incalculable benefit, and which
they will be proud to show to visitors. In the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in this city we have made an excellent beginning. Here is another
avenue for the proper use of surplus wealth.
_Third_--We have another most important department in which great sums
can be worthily used,--the founding or extension of hospitals, medical
colleges, laboratories, and other institutions connected with the
alleviation of human suffering, and especially with the prevention
rather than the cure of human ills. There is no danger of pauperizing a
community in giving for such purposes, because such institutions relieve
temporary ailments or shelter only those who are hopeless invalids. What
better gift than a hospital can be given to a community that is without
one?--the gift being conditioned upon its proper maintenance by the
community in its corporate capacity. If hospital accommodation already
exists, no better method for using surplus wealth can be found than in
making additions to it. The late Mr. Vanderbilt's gift of half a million
of dollars to the medical department of Columbia College for a chemical
laboratory was one of the wisest possible uses of wealth. It strikes at
the prevention of disease by penetrating into its causes. Several others
have established such laboratories, but the need for them is still
great.
If there be a millionaire in the land who is at a loss what to do with
the surplus that has been committed to him as trustee, let him
investigate the good that is flowing from these chemical laboratories.
No medical college is complete without its laboratory. As with
universities, so with medical colleges; it is not new institutions that
are required, but additional means for the more thorough equipment of
those that exist. The forms that benefactions to these may wisely take
are numerous, but probably none is more useful than that adopted by Mr.
Osborne when he built a school for training female nurses at Bellevue
College. If from all gifts there flows one-half of the good that comes
from this wise use of a millionaire's surplus, the most exacting may
well be satisfied. Only those who have passed through a lingering and
dangerous illness can rate at their true value the care, skill, and
attendance of trained female nurses. Their employment as nurses has
enlarged the sphere and influence of woman. It is not to be wondered at
that a Senator of the United States and a physician distinguished in
this country for having received the highest distinctions abroad should
find their wives from this class.
_Fourth_--In the very front rank of benefactions public parks should be
placed, always provided that the community undertakes to maintain,
beautify, and preserve inviolate the parks given to it. No more useful
or more beautiful monument can be left by any man than a park for the
city in which he was born or in which he has long lived, nor can the
community pay a more graceful tribute to the citizen who presents it
than to give his name to the gift. If a park be already provided, there
is still room for many judicious gifts in connection with it. Mr.
Phipps, of Allegheny, has given conservatories to the park there, which
are visited by many every day of the week, and crowded by thousands of
working people every Sunday, for, with rare wisdom, he has stipulated as
a condition of the gift that the conservatories shall be open on
Sundays. The result of his experiment has been so gratifying that he is
justified in adding to them from his surplus, as he is doing largely
this year. To any lover of flowers among the wealthy I commend a study
of what is possible for them to do in the light of Mr. Phipps's example;
and may they please note that Mr. Phipps is a wise as well as a liberal
giver, for he requires the city to maintain these conservatories, and
thus secures for them forever the public ownership, the public interest,
and the public criticism of their management. Had he undertaken to
manage and maintain them, it is probable that popular interest in the
gift would never have been awakened.
The parks and pleasure-grounds of small towns throughout Europe are not
less surprising than their libraries, museums, and art galleries. We saw
nothing more pleasing during our recent travels than the hillside of
Bergen, in Norway. It has been converted into one of the most
picturesque of pleasure-grounds; fountains, cascades, water-falls,
delightful arbors, fine terraces, and statues adorn what was before a
barren mountain side. Here is a field worthy of study by the millionaire
who would confer a lasting benefit upon his fellows. Another beautiful
instance of the right use of wealth in the direction of making cities
more and more attractive we found in Dresden. The owner of the leading
paper there bequeathed its revenues forever to the city, to be used in
beautifying it. An art committee decides from time to time what new
artistic feature is to be introduced or what hideous feature is to be
changed, and as the revenues accrue they are expended in this direction.
Thus through the gift of this patriotic newspaper proprietor his native
city of Dresden is fast becoming one of the most artistic places of
residence in the whole world. A work having been completed, it devolves
upon the city to maintain it forever. May I be excused if I commend to
our millionaire newspaper proprietors the example of their colleague in
the capital of Saxony?
Scarcely a city of any magnitude in the older countries is without many
structures and features of great beauty. Much has been spent upon
ornament, decoration, and architectural effect: we are still far behind
in these things upon this side of the Atlantic. Our Republic is great in
some things,--in material development unrivalled; but let us always
remember that in art and in the finer touches we have scarcely yet taken
a place. Had the exquisite memorial arch recently erected temporarily in
New York been shown in Dresden, the art committee there would probably
have been enabled, from the revenue of the newspaper given by its owner
for just such purposes, to order its permanent erection to adorn the
city forever.
While the bestowal of a park upon a community as one of the best uses
for surplus wealth will be universally approved, in embracing such
additions to it as conservatories, or in advocating the building of
memorial arches and works of adornment, it is probable that many will
think we go too far, and consider these somewhat fanciful. The material
good to flow from them may not be so directly visible; but let not any
practical mind, intent only upon material good, depreciate the value of
wealth given for these or for kindred aesthetic purposes as being
useless as far as the mass of the people and their needs are concerned.
As with libraries and museums, so with these more distinctively artistic
works; these perform their great use when they reach the best of the
masses of the people. It is worth more to reach and touch the sentiment
for beauty in the naturally bright minds of this class than that those
incapable of being so touched should be pandered to. For what the
improver of the race must endeavor to do is to reach those who have the
divine spark ever so feebly developed, that it may be strengthened and
grow. For my part, I think Mr. Phipps put his money to better use in
giving the workingmen of Allegheny conservatories filled with beautiful
flowers, orchids, and aquatic plants, which they, with their wives and
children, can enjoy in their spare hours, and on which they can feed the
love for the beautiful, than if he had given his surplus money to
furnish them with bread, for those in health who cannot earn their bread
are scarcely worth considering by the individual giver; the care of such
being the duty of the state. The man who erects in a city a truly
artistic arch, statue, or fountain makes a wise use of his surplus. "Man
does not live by bread alone."
_Fifth_--We have another good use for surplus wealth, in providing for
our cities halls suitable for meetings of all kinds, especially for
concerts of elevating music. Our cities are rarely provided with halls
for these purposes, being in this respect also very far behind European
cities. The Springer Hall, of Cincinnati, that valuable addition to the
city, was largely the gift of Mr. Springer, who was not content to
bequeath funds from his estate at death, but who gave during his life,
and, in addition, gave--what was equally important--his time and
business ability to insure the successful results which have been
achieved. The gift of a hall to any city lacking one is an excellent use
for surplus wealth for the good of a community. The reason why the
people have only one instructive and elevating, or even amusing,
entertainment when a dozen would be highly beneficial, is that the rent
of a hall, even when a suitable hall exists (which is rare), is so great
as to prevent managers from running the risk of financial failure. If
every city in our land owned a hall which could be given or rented for a
small sum for such gatherings as a committee or the mayor of the city
judged advantageous, the people could be furnished with proper lectures,
amusements, and concerts at an exceedingly small cost. The town halls of
European cities, many of which have organs, are of inestimable value to
the people, when utilized as they are in the manner suggested. Let no
one underrate the influence of entertainments of an elevating or even of
an amusing character, for these do much to make the lives of the people
happier and their natures better. If any millionaire born in a small
village, which has now become a great city, is prompted in the day of
his success to do something for his birthplace with part of his surplus,
his grateful remembrance cannot take a form more useful than that of a
public hall with an organ, provided the city agrees to maintain and use
it.
_Sixth_--In another respect we are still much behind Europe. A form of
beneficence which is not uncommon there is providing swimming baths for
the people. The donors of these have been wise enough to require the
city benefited to maintain them at its own expense, and as proof of the
contention that everything should never be done for any one or for any
community, but that the recipients should invariably be called upon to
do part, it is significant that it is found essential for the popular
success of these healthful establishments to exact a nominal charge for
their use. In many cities, however, the school children are admitted
free at fixed hours upon certain days, different hours being fixed for
the boys and the girls to use the great swimming baths, hours or days
being also fixed for the use of these baths by ladies. In inland cities
the young of both sexes are thus taught to swim. Swimming clubs are
organized, and matches are frequent, at which medals and prizes are
given. The reports published by the various swimming baths throughout
Great Britain are filled with instances of lives saved because those who
fortunately escaped ship-wreck had been taught to swim in the baths, and
not a few instances are given in which the pupils of certain bathing
establishments have saved the lives of others. If any disciple of the
"Gospel of Wealth" gives his favorite city large swimming and private
baths (provided the municipality undertakes their management as a city
affair), he will never be called to account for an improper use of the
funds intrusted to him.
_Seventh_--Churches as fields for the use of surplus wealth have
purposely been reserved until the last, because, these being sectarian,
every man will be governed by his own attachments; therefore gifts to
churches, it may be said, are not, in one sense, gifts to the community
at large, but to special classes. Nevertheless, every millionaire may
know of a district where the little cheap, uncomfortable, and altogether
unworthy wooden structure stands at the cross-roads, to which the whole
neighborhood gathers on Sunday, and which is the centre of social life
and source of neighborly feeling. The administrator of wealth has made a
good use of part of his surplus if he replaces that building with a
permanent structure of brick, stone, or granite, up the sides of which
the honeysuckle and columbine may climb, and from whose tower the
sweet-tolling bell may sound. The millionaire should not figure how
cheaply this structure can be built, but how perfect it can be made. If
he has the money, it should be made a gem, for the educating influence
of a pure and noble specimen of architecture, built, as the pyramids
were built, to stand for ages, is not to be measured by dollars. Every
farmer's home, heart, and mind in the district will be influenced by the
beauty and grandeur of the church. But having given the building, the
donor should stop there; the support of the church should be upon its
own people; there is not much genuine religion in the congregation or
much good to flow from the church which is not supported at home.
Many other avenues for the wise expenditure of surplus wealth might be
indicated. I enumerate but a few--a very few--of the many fields which
are open, and only these in which great or considerable sums can be
judiciously used. It is not the privilege, however, of millionaires
alone to work for or aid measures which are certain to benefit the
community. Every one who has but a small surplus above his moderate
wants may share this privilege with his richer brothers, and those
without surplus can give at least part of their time, which is usually
as important as funds, and often more so. Some day, perhaps, with your
permission, I will endeavor to point out some fields and modes in which
these may perform well their part as trustees of wealth, or leisure,
according to the measure of their respective fortunes.
It is not expected, neither is it desirable, that there should be a
general concurrence as to the best possible use of surplus wealth. For
different men and different localities there are different uses. What
commends itself more highly to the judgment of the administrator is the
best use for him, for his heart should be in the work. It is as
important in administering wealth as it is in any other branch of a
man's work that he should be enthusiastically devoted to it and feel
that in the field selected his work lies.
Besides this, there is room and need for all kinds of wise benefactions
for the common weal. The man who builds a university, library, or
laboratory performs no more useful work than he who elects to devote
himself and his surplus means to the adornment of a park, the gathering
together of a collection of pictures for the public, or the building of
a memorial arch. These are all true laborers in the vineyard. The only
point required by the "Gospel of Wealth" is that the surplus which
accrues from time to time in the hands of man should be administered by
him in his own lifetime for that purpose which is seen by him, as
trustee, to be best for the good of the people. To leave at death what
he cannot take away, and place upon others the burden of the work which
it was his own duty to perform, is to do nothing worthy. This requires
no sacrifice, nor any sense of duty to his fellows.
Time was when the words concerning the rich man entering heaven were
regarded as a hard saying. Today, when all questions are probed to the
bottom and the standards of faith received the most liberal
interpretations, the startling verse has been relegated to the rear, to
await the next kindly revision as one of those things which cannot be
quite understood, but which meanwhile--it is carefully to be
observed--are not to be understood literally. But is it so very
improbable that the next stage of thought is not to restore the doctrine
in all its pristine purity and force, as being in perfect harmony with
sound ideas upon the subject of wealth and poverty, the rich and the
poor, and the contrasts everywhere seen and deplored? In Christ's day,
it is evident, reformers were against the wealthy. It is none the less
evident that we are fast recurring to that position to-day; and there
will be nothing to surprise the student of sociological development if
society should soon approve the text which has caused so much anxiety:
"It is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for a rich
man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Even if the needle were the small
casement at the gates, the words betoken serious difficulty for the
rich. It will be but a step for the theologian to take from the doctrine
that he who dies rich dies disgraced to that which brings upon the man
punishment or deprivation hereafter.
The "Gospel of Wealth" but echoes Christ's words. It calls upon the
millionaire to sell all that he hath and give it in the highest and best
form to the poor, by administering his estate himself for the good of
his fellows, before he is called upon to lie down and rest upon the
bosom of Mother Earth. So doing, he will approach his end no longer the
ignoble hoarder of useless millions, poor, very poor indeed, in money,
but rich, very rich, twenty times a millionaire still, in the affection,
gratitude and admiration of his fellow-men, and--sweeter far--soothed
and sustained by the still small voice within, which, whispering, tells
him that, because he has lived, perhaps one small part of the great
world has been bettered just a little. This much is sure: against such
riches as these no bar will be found at the gates of Paradise.
THE IDEA OF A POPULAR LIBRARY
The following seven papers give some fundamental ideas on
the functions of popular libraries. They are arranged in
chronological order, and, so grouped, span the gap between
1851 and 1906, considerably more than half a century. The
first is interesting as presenting a discussion at the
inception of our first great public library, that of the
city of Boston, quoted from "The Life, Letters and Journals
of George Ticknor" (Boston, 1909). Ticknor's idea of a
popular library, given in a letter to Edward Everett, is
followed by Everett's answer. Some of the editor's comments
precede and conclude. Those interested may read on, in
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 wi
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