The rapid increase in the number and importance of public libraries, both in this country and in England, is perhaps the most marked feature of educational development during the past twenty-five years; for within that brief period the first of them was opened to the public.
My subject, as announced in the programme, requires me to speak of popular objections; yet I must confess that popular appreciation of these inst.i.tutions, where they have been established, would have furnished a more attractive theme. As their foundation involves taxation, that prolific source of political controversy, it is somewhat remarkable that in the eleven States of our Union where public-library statutes have been enacted, so little public discussion has occurred, and so few objections have been offered. I have heard of no instance where such a bill was proposed in a State legislature and was defeated.
That all the Northern States, where general education and the common-school system are established, have not by legislation provided also for the public library--the natural ally and supplement of that system--is doubtless owing to the fact that the people have not asked for such legislation. The unanimity of the vote by which towns have accepted taxation for the support of public libraries is significant.
The Commissioner of Education at Washington recently made inquiries on this point, and received replies from 37 towns and cities. In 32 of these the vote was unanimous; in 5 there was a divided sentiment, but the vote was 1730 in favor to 515 against taxation. The vote of the rate-payers in some English towns and cities where free libraries have been established was as follows:
Ayes. Noes.
Manchester 3962 40 Winchester 337 13 Bolton 662 55 Cambridge 873 78 Oxford 596 72 Sheffield 838 232 Kidderminster 108 11 Blackburn 1700 2 Dundee, no dissentient.
By the latest statistics of the Bureau of Education, it appears that there are 188 public libraries in eleven of the United States. Of these five are Eastern States--Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut; five are Western States--Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa: and one is a Southern State--Texas. Eight of these States have pa.s.sed public-library statutes within the past ten years. In the number of libraries the States rank as follows: Ma.s.sachusetts, 127; Illinois, 14; New Hampshire, 13; Ohio, 9; Maine, 8; Vermont, Connecticut, and Wisconsin, 4 each; Indiana, 3; Iowa and Texas, 1 each.
In the number of volumes they rank as follows (in round numbers): Ma.s.sachusetts, 920,000; Ohio, 144,000; Illinois, 77,000; New Hampshire, 52,000; Maine, 34,000; Indiana, 26,000; Vermont, 16,000; Connecticut, 15,000; Texas, 10,000; Wisconsin, 6000; Iowa, 1000. The aggregate number of volumes in these libraries is 1,300,000, and their annual aggregate circulation is 4,735,000 volumes. It is noticeable that no one of these libraries is in New York, Pennsylvania, or any of the Middle States. The representatives from those States in this Conference may be able to account for this hiatus in the statistics of the Bureau of Education.
In this brief sketch of the statistics of our American public libraries we have not found much evidence of popular objections to their inception and organization. In England, however, where the questions of national schools, secular schools, and parochial schools are still mooted, the idea of levying a general tax for the support of a library free to all, and furnished with books adapted to the capacities of all cla.s.ses, was not in harmony with the traditions and public policy of that people. In 1848, the same year that the Legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts, at the suggestion of Josiah Quincy, Mayor of Boston, pa.s.sed an act authorizing the city of Boston to maintain a public library, Mr. William Ewart, member of Parliament, moved in the House of Commons for a committee of inquiry respecting libraries. Such a committee was raised, and Mr. Ewart was appointed chairman. Much evidence was taken; a report was made; and in February, 1850, a bill was introduced into the House of Commons enabling town councils to establish public libraries and museums. "Our younger brethren, the people of the United States," says the report, "have already antic.i.p.ated us in the formation of libraries entirely open to the public." The bill proposed limited the rate of taxation to one halfpenny in the pound; required the affirmative vote of two thirds of the rate-payers; restricted its operation to towns which had at least ten thousand inhabitants; and provided that the money so raised should be expended only in building and contingent expenses. This bill, meagre indeed compared with the later enactments of Parliament, met persistent opposition from the conservative benches. An ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer objected because it did not give sufficient powers to form a library; and he should object to it more strongly if it did. Who was to select the books? Was every publication that issued from the press to be procured? or was there to be a censorship introduced? Another member claimed that the bill would enable a few persons to tax the general body of rate-payers for their own benefit, and the library would degenerate into a political club. Col. Sibthorp thought that, however excellent food for the mind might be, food for the body was more needed by the people. "I do not like reading at all," he said, "and hated it when I was at Oxford." Lord John Manners said he could not support the bill, because it would impose an additional tax upon the agricultural interest. Mr. Spooner feared these inst.i.tutions might be converted into normal schools of agitation. Sir Roundell Palmer--since the Lord Chancellor of England--was most apprehensive that the moment the compulsory principle was introduced, a positive check would be imposed upon the voluntary, self-supporting desire which existed among the people. A division being taken on the bill, there were 118 ayes and 101 noes. The bill pa.s.sed the House of Commons in July, and the House of Lords, without opposition, in August, 1850.
The Manchester, Liverpool, and Bolton free libraries were immediately organized under this act, the cost of the books being defrayed by public subscription. In 1853 similar legislation was extended to Scotland and Ireland. In July, 1855, the new libraries having gone into operation with the most encouraging results, a new and more liberal library act was pa.s.sed, by a vote of three to one, which raised the rate of taxation from a halfpenny to a penny in the pound, and allowed the income to be expended for books. Its provisions were made to include towns, boroughs, parishes, and districts having a population of 5000 inhabitants, and permitted two adjoining parishes, having an aggregate population of five thousand, to unite in the establishment of a library.
In 1866 the library act was again improved by removing the limit of population required, and reducing the two-thirds vote on the acceptance of the library tax to a bare majority vote. Provision was also made for cases in which the overseers of parishes refused or neglected to call a meeting of the rate-payers to vote on the question. Any ten rate-payers could secure the calling of such a meeting, and the vote there taken was made binding and legal.
The English free-library system is now so firmly established that it will not be changed except to expand and enlarge it. Its chief supporters are the middle cla.s.ses, and artisans and laborers, who, with their families, are its most numerous patrons.
The recent extension of suffrage in England has strengthened the system.
No candidate for official position who opposed it could hope for success. It has been found that free libraries have not degenerated into political clubs and schools of agitation. No trouble has arisen in the selection of books, and no censorship of the press was required. It was at first supposed that all books relating to religion and politics--the subjects on which people quarrel most--must be excluded. The experiment of including these books was tried in the Manchester and Liverpool libraries, where the books were purchased by private subscription, and no controversy arising therefrom, all apprehension of evil from this cause was allayed. Parliament doubled the rate of taxation, and permitted the purchase of books from the public funds. The adoption of the compulsory system has not imposed a check on the voluntary and self-supporting desire of possessing books which existed among the people. It has strengthened that desire; and ample proof of this statement could be furnished if the prescribed limits of this paper would permit.
It is singular that objections to public libraries have come mainly from men--as we have seen from the debate in the British Parliament--who are educated, and in general matters of public welfare are intelligent above their fellows. These objections, however, were uttered before the persons making them had given the subject any attention, and hence they were disqualified from entertaining an opinion.
Nearly all the objections to public libraries which have been expressed in this country--and these appear more frequently in private conversation than in the public prints--may be cla.s.sed under three heads:
1. The universal dread of taxation. Libraries cost money. In every city and town of the land there is a feeling that the present rate of taxation is all that the property and business of the place will bear.
This feeling existed before the taxes were one half their present rates.
There is a generous rivalry among our cities and towns in the maintenance of good schools; and localities which furnish the best facilities for education are regarded as the most desirable places for residence. Viewed simply as a matter of public economy, no city can afford to dispense with its educational system, or to permit it to degenerate. The public library also should be maintained as the supplement of the public school, carrying forward the education of the people from the point where the public school leaves it.
2. There are certain theoretical objections offered to the establishment and maintenance of public libraries. One is that the library tax bears unequally upon the people. Some persons do not care to read books, and others prefer to pay for their own reading. The same objection is quite as valid against any system of public education. To lay the burden of education uniformly upon property, and to tax the owner who has no children, or, having children, prefers to educate them at private schools, is another glaring instance of inequality. No taxation for the maintenance of public health, the introduction of water and gas, the construction of roads, bridges, and sewers, bears equally upon every member of the community. If perfect equality in the distribution of these burdens were a necessity, an organized munic.i.p.ality would be an impossibility.
Perhaps the most popular objection to public libraries is the one urged by the few disciples of Herbert Spencer--that government has no legitimate function except the protection of person and property, as the original compact of society is simply for the purpose of protection. All else is paternal, pertains to the commune, and tends to perpetual antagonism. The government may support a police, courts of justice, prisons, penitentiaries, and similar inst.i.tutions, and can do nothing else.
How are the people under this theory to be educated? The reply is explicit: Unless they will educate themselves, they are not to be educated. How is the public health to be maintained? It is not to be maintained by any interference of government. Who is to build bridges and sewers and lay out public parks? n.o.body. Imagine, if it be possible, a community where such a Utopian theory was carried out. Such a government fortunately does not, and never did, exist on the face of the globe. The "general welfare"--which includes protection--is expressly stated in the preamble of the national const.i.tution to be the purpose of our government, and the same expression is found in nearly all the state const.i.tutions. What ever the people desire, and whatever will, in their judgment, conduce to the general welfare, is a legitimate subject for governmental action. "The only orthodox object of the inst.i.tution of government," says Mr. Jefferson, "is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general ma.s.s of those a.s.sociated under it."
Herbert Spencer wrote his "Social Statics" before the British Parliament pa.s.sed an act for the support of public libraries. Mr. Ewart"s bill was then before Parliament; and Mr. Spencer, in that work, took occasion to fling a sneer at it. In the preface of his American edition, written in 1864, he states, without remodelling the text, that "the work does not accurately represent his present opinions."
3. The third and last cla.s.s of objections to public libraries to which I shall direct your attention relates to the kind and quality of books circulated. These objections, which are usually made by educated and scholarly persons, are based on an entire misconception of the facts in the case. The objectors do not divest themselves of the old idea that libraries are established for the exclusive benefit of scholars; whereas the purpose of these is to furnish reading for all cla.s.ses in the community. On no other principle would a general tax for their support be justifiable. The ma.s.ses of a community have very little of literary and scholarly culture. They need more of this culture, and the purpose of the library is to develop and increase it. This is done by placing in their hands such books as they can read with pleasure and appreciate, and by stimulating them to acquire the _habit_ of reading. We must first interest the reader before we can educate him; and, to this end, must commence at his own standard of intelligence. The scholar, in his pride of intellect, forgets the progressive steps he took in his own mental development--the stories read to him in the nursery, the boy"s book of adventure in which he revelled with delight, and the sentimental novel over which he shed tears in his youth. Our objector supposes that the ma.s.ses will read books of his standard if they were not supplied with the books to which he objects; but he is mistaken. Shut up to this choice, they will read no books. When the habit of reading is once acquired, the reader"s taste, and hence the quality of his reading, progressively improve.
The standard histories, technical works of science, and even Shakespeare"s plays and Milton"s "Paradise Lost," are sealed books to a larger portion of every community than are willing to acknowledge the fact. "When a Boy," said John Quincy Adams, "I attempted ten times to read Milton"s "Paradise Lost." I was mortified, even to the shedding of tears, that I could not conceive what it was that my father and mother so much admired in that book. I smoked tobacco and read Milton at the same time, and for the same motive: to find out what was the recondite charm in them that gave my father so much pleasure. After making myself sick four or five times with smoking, I mastered that accomplishment; but I did not master Milton. I was nearly thirty years of age when I first read "Paradise Lost" with delight and astonishment."
If our objectors mourn over the standard of books which are read by the public, they may be consoled by the fact that, as a rule, people read books better than themselves, and hence are benefited by reading. A book of a lower intellectual or moral standard than the reader"s is thrown aside in disgust, to be picked up and read by a person still lower in the scale of mental and moral development.
I do not lament, or join in the clamor sometimes raised, over the statistics of prose fiction circulated at public libraries. Why this lamentation over one specific form of fiction? The writers of such prose fiction as is found in our libraries were as eminent and worthy men and women as the writers of poetical fiction, dramatic fiction, or, I might add, the fiction which pa.s.ses in the world as history and biography.
History professes to relate actual events, biography to describe actual lives, and science to unfold and explain natural laws and physical phenomena. Fiction treats these and other subjects, mental, moral, sentimental, and divine, from an ideal or artistic standpoint; and the great ma.s.s of readers prefer to take their knowledge in this form. More is known to-day of the history and traditions of Scotland, and of the social customs of London, from the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Charles d.i.c.kens than from all the histories of those localities. Fiction is the art element in literature, and the most enduring monuments of genius in the literature of any people are works of the imagination.
It is said that there is much poor fiction, and the statement is true.
So there are many poor pictures and poor statues, wretched chromos and more wretched plaster casts. That these productions find purchasers is evidence that there are persons whose ideal standard of excellence is even below these feeble efforts, and they are educated thereby.
But there are novels, we are told, which are immoral and positively debasing. So there are immoral paintings and indecent plastic objects.
The act of photography, I am told, is debased to the lowest purposes.
n.o.body would think of objecting to art because it can be and is degraded. The librarian who should allow an immoral novel in his library for circulation would be as culpable as the manager of a picture gallery who should hang an indecent picture on his walls.
Young people, again, we are told, read too many novels. So they eat too much, play too much, go too often to the lake to bathe, remain too long in the water, and do too much of everything in which they take special delight. The remedy is not to deprive children of these pleasures, but that parents and guardians should regulate them. I have never met a person of much literary culture who would not confess that at some period in his life, usually in his youth, he had read novels excessively. His special interest in them suddenly ceased. He found himself with a confirmed habit of reading, an awakened imagination, a full vocabulary, and a taste for other and higher cla.s.ses of literature.
A novel was read occasionally in later life, as recreation in the midst of professional or technical studies. My observation addressed to this point, and extending over a library experience of thirty years, has confirmed me in the belief that there is in the mental development of every person who later attains to literary culture a limited period when he craves novel-reading, and perhaps reads novels to excess; but from which, if the desire be gratified, he pa.s.ses safely out into broader fields of study, and this craving never returns to him in its original form.
Again, and finally, we are told that the reading of fiction should be discouraged because it is not _true_. What department of literature is true? Is it history? Whose history of the United States, for instance, is the true history? Is it Bancroft"s? Mr. Bancroft for forty years has been changing the plates of his work to an extent that in pages we can scarcely recognize the original text, and lately he has revised the whole in the new Centennial edition. The accurate student of specialties in American history will talk to you by the hour of mis-statements and errors found in this new issue. Whose history of the reigns of Henry VIII. and of Queen Elizabeth is the true one? Is it Hume"s, Turner"s, Lingard"s, or Froude"s? "Do not read to me history," said a sick monarch, "that I know is a lie. Read to me something that is true." Is biography true? Which of the score of lives of Mary Queen of Scots is the true biography? Is theology true? Whose is the true body of divinity? Is science true? Why was it necessary to rewrite all the science in the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for the ninth edition? Homer"s Iliad, Dante"s Divine Comedy, Shakespeare"s Hamlet and Oth.e.l.lo, do not require to be rewritten every ten or twenty years. The Vicar of Wakefield, Ivanhoe, and Robinson Crusoe have held and will hold their own from generation to generation without revision, because they are _ideally true_ pictures of human life and human nature.
Shall we say that in literature and science there is nothing true but fiction and the pure mathematics?
In the public libraries which are growing up in our land, fully four fifths of the money appropriated for books is spent in works adapted to the wants of scholars. In the larger libraries the proportion is even greater. It is hardly becoming for scholars, who enjoy the lion"s share, to object to the small proportional expenditure for books adapted to the wants of the ma.s.ses who bear the burden of taxation.
Mr. Edward Edwards, of the Manchester Library, speaking, in 1859, of novels and romances--which he circulated more freely than is done in any American library--remarked as follows: "It may be truthfully said that at no previous period in the history of English literature has prose fiction been made, in so great a degree as of late years, the vehicle of the best thoughts of some of the best thinkers. Nor, taking it as a whole, was it ever before characterized by so much general purity of tone or loftiness of purpose."
HOW TO USE A LIBRARY
The substance of two addresses made at Pittsfield, Ma.s.s., and printed in _The Library Journal_ for February, 1884. Mr.
Hubbard"s advice with regard to children"s reading was followed long ago by specialization in work with children.
That with regard to adult fiction remains unheeded. Some day, possibly we shall have "adults" librarians" and training for "work with adults."
James Mascarene Hubbard was born in Boston in 1836. He was made a.s.sistant librarian of the Boston Public Library in 1884 and also reorganized the Berkshire Athenaeum of Pittsfield, Ma.s.s., in the same year.
Among all the pictures of Abraham Lincoln none perhaps are more interesting than two which represent scenes at the beginning and at the end of his life. In the first, a lad of thirteen or fourteen, he is reading by the light of a fire in his father"s log hut. In the second, he is reading the Bible to his sons in a room in the White House. This Bible, which lies before the President in the latter picture, with a catechism and a spelling-book, were the only books in that frontier cabin when he learned to read. Though his father could neither read nor write, yet he took the greatest interest in getting books for his son, so that when he was eighteen his library consisted of the Bible, Pilgrim"s Progress, aesop"s Fables, Weem"s and Ramsay"s Lives of Washington, a Life of Clay, the Autobiography of Franklin, and a copy of Plutarch. It is note-worthy that the one which influenced him the most strongly, after the Bible, was the Life of Washington. At the very crisis of his career, when on his way to the national capital to take the leading part in crushing out the rebellion, he reverted to those early days, and recalled the burning thoughts which filled his mind while reading of the sufferings and sacrifices endured for the sake of freedom by the great patriot leader and his followers.
Lincoln"s experience was, of course, no solitary one, but it doubtless had a great effect when it became generally known. It filled many men"s imaginations with pictures of obscure lads with latent powers for n.o.ble deeds in danger of being stunted or wholly destroyed for want of proper nourishment, and they gave freely and generously that these "village Hampdens," these hearts "pregnant with sacred fire," might not live useless and ign.o.ble lives for want of books alone. Hence to-day a large section of our country is dotted over with libraries, in which the collective wisdom and experience of the world, as it were, are gathered for the use especially of the youth of the nation.
But, as is inevitable with the blessing of abundance, has come its danger also. Lincoln"s naturally great intellectual powers were strengthened by their being at first exercised upon a few subjects. The possession of a book being an era in his early life from its rarity, he read and re-read each one which he got, so as almost to learn it by heart before he read another. So the vivid impressions received from the lives of Washington and the other great heroes of history ran no risk of being dissipated before they could have their full effect upon his mind and heart. This, however, is our danger in this day of public libraries and cheap literature, that the mental strength of our youth will be weakened through the too much reading of a mult.i.tude of books. As the waters of a brook when confined to a narrow channel may have power enough to set in motion a thousand spindles, but if suffered to spread over the ground are not able to turn a child"s toy wheel, so with the powers of the mind. When directed to a few objects they may be capable of the greatest and most beneficent results, but when allowed to exhaust themselves upon a mult.i.tude they are in danger of becoming sterile and unfruitful. With Lincoln then, and with many a frontier and backwoods boy now, the question was and is, How shall I get a book? With a greater number to-day, however, the more important question is, Which book shall I choose?
Before attempting to aid any one to answer this question for himself, let me briefly advert to the fact that there are two kinds of reading for each of us, and two corresponding uses, therefore, of the library--the reading for amus.e.m.e.nt and the reading for profit. In regard to the former, I can say but a word, as it is a subject by itself. And that word is, let this reading be the best possible, and do not let it occupy too much of your spare time. Books read simply for amus.e.m.e.nt have on most a greater power to elevate or degrade than any others, and more care should be taken in selecting them than in the choice of those to be read for instruction. Read then, and put into the hands of the young the best fiction, and shun those writers, whatever their power or their popularity, who reproduce in their books the slang and vulgar speech of the streets and paint realistic scenes of vice and crime.
The answer to the question, How or what shall I read? must necessarily be as varied as the tastes, the talents, and the circ.u.mstances of readers vary. The general aim, however, should be the same in all. We should read in order to do well whatever we have to do in life. Now this implies something more than the reading simply to increase one"s knowledge--certainly a worthy aim, but not the highest. The field of knowledge is so broad and the time for reading so short that we must necessarily choose those subjects, the knowledge of which will make us better fitted for our work in life. And the mere seeking for knowledge, which is the sole end of much reading, does not imply, but may even prevent the attaining that higher end, the cultivation of our n.o.bler powers, as the imagination and the sympathies, and the gaining the power of appreciating what is highest and best in literature and life. For instance, one may be conscious of a total lack of a love for any great writer. To him Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and their peers are but names. Now it may be that the best use to which such an one can put a library is to make at least the attempt to understand and enjoy some great author. It will be no easy task, but one needing and worthy the hardest study. To take, as an ill.u.s.tration of one method, a lesser poet, read carefully and thoughtfully Matthew Arnold"s introduction to his edition of the selected poems of Wordsworth. Whenever he refers to a poem, read it before going farther and re-read it until the thought of the poet as indicated by the commentator is reasonably clear. Then read in the same manner what Coleridge, Shairp, F.W. Robertson, or any other good critic has written upon Wordsworth. And, above all, sometimes read the poems as nearly as possible in the same circ.u.mstances under which they were written--in the forest, by the brook-side, in the solitudes of the mountains, or on a bridge in the heart of a great city. If this fail to awaken an interest in Wordsworth, try some other author in a similar way, and it is impossible that of all who have stirred men"s hearts through the ages, no one can be found to arouse your sympathies. And when the right author is at length found, you live on a higher plane than before. This great poet, philosopher, or dramatist has become your friend and familiar companion--a gain far greater than the acquirement of any mere book knowledge.
The greater part of another person"s life may be spent in sordid surroundings, with companions and in an occupation tending to depress and degrade the better nature. I can easily conceive that it might be the highest duty of such an one to remain ignorant of much useful knowledge in order to quicken the imagination, to enlarge the tastes, and heighten the enjoyments. So that when the day"s work is done, he may exchange the sordid companions, suggestive only of mean thoughts and low aims, for intercourse with men of purest and n.o.blest nature--men, too, it may be, who have lived, thought, and written under circ.u.mstances as depressing as those in which he lives and works. So there may be some one who regretfully feels that in Nature there is nothing which gives to him, as to others, the keenest pleasure, refreshing him when wearied, encouraging him when downcast. Who sees nothing in the skies save signs of the coming storm, nothing in the trees or flowers, the rivers or the hills, save something relating to his material comfort or discomfort.
The best use to which this man could put a library and his reading hours might be to study the works of the great interpreters of nature, as White of Selborne, Ruskin, or Emerson. And if they should open his eyes so that he can look "through Nature up to Nature"s G.o.d," his gain is immeasurable.
Now, in neither of these instances is the increase of knowledge the aim set before the reader, but the development of some dwarfed faculty whose growth is necessary to the leading of a n.o.ble life. But where the increase of knowledge is the direct end sought, the value of the knowledge in itself must not be that alone which decides one in the choice of books, or incites him to reading, but the use to which it can and ought to be put. An employer of labor, for instance, one who is immediately responsible for the welfare of a large number of workmen, cannot, with any true conception of his duty as a master, devote his time for reading to acquiring a knowledge of history, science, or literature, if he know nothing of the principles underlying the relations of capital to labor, if he is ignorant of the dangers, the temptations, the needs and rights of his workpeople. However well-informed on other subjects, he has read to far less advantage than if his books had been chosen with a direct purpose to fit him to do his duty as a master. So many a parent ought, for a time at least, to read with a view wholly to prepare himself for the wise moral and mental training of his children. And on the other hand a man should read the history of his country, not merely that he may not blush from conscious ignorance of it, but that, knowing what his heritage of freedom cost to obtain, he may also come to the conviction that it is not his to enjoy simply, but it is a sacred trust to be accounted for, however humble his position. It could not be more humble than Lincoln"s, and yet none can doubt that to the spirit in which he read American history was largely due his future fitness for the great work which G.o.d gave him to do.
To what highest and most profitable use can I put my reading? is the question then which each one should ask himself, and according as the answer is, so should the choice be made. It may be that one will read that he may understand better his duties and privileges as a citizen; another, that he may be a just master, or an intelligent and faithful workman; still another, that she may be a wise parent; while a fourth may have the strong conviction that everything else should be laid aside for the study of one of the masterpieces of the world"s literature, that he may develop his higher faculties and become a man thinking lofty thoughts and capable of n.o.ble deeds.
But there is a very large cla.s.s of readers, especially of a public library, to whom what I have just said will be of but little use. And as it is upon them that the choice of books has the greatest influence for good or evil, it is to speak of their interests that I turn with the deepest solicitude. This cla.s.s may be subdivided into two cla.s.ses--the children of intelligent parents who are capable of directing their reading, and those children who have none to guide them in their choice.
As regards the former, one of the greatest dangers of the public library, in my opinion, is that many parents throw off all responsibility as to the books their children read upon those who have charge of the library. A generation ago, all the books, as a rule, which the young read were bought especially for them by their parents or friends, with more or less care in the selection. Of course under these circ.u.mstances they had a general knowledge of what their children read.
Now a great many parents neither know, nor do they apparently seem to care to know, what books fall into their children"s hands, so long as they are from the public library, which is supposed to be a guarantee for their fitness for young readers. Without entering here upon the important question as to what books should or should not be put in a public library, it is enough to say that no intelligent parent, with a right idea of his duty toward his children, can properly lay this responsibility upon persons, however carefully chosen or however faithful in the discharge of their duties. The capacity of children for receiving good or bad impressions from books differs, as their features and forms vary. The same story might prove harmless to one boy and give a moral twist to another"s mind from which he might never recover. One girl might receive from a book a hundred evil suggestions, hopelessly depraving her imagination, while upon another it might not leave a single evil trace. Now, it is not possible for the most scrupulous librarian to discriminate between these two, and refuse the book to the one and freely give it to the other. And therefore no library with a large and miscellaneous collection of stories and novels can be safe for children freely to use except under the careful supervision of their parents. The only safeguard of which I know is for parents to read much with their children, to interest themselves in their books, and to talk with them about them. Those stories, for instance, against which there has been such an outcry of late years, would have but small power to hurt that boy to whom a father had taken the pains to point out the absurdities, the unrealities, the false ideas and aims of which they are accused.
But in our cities and large towns there can be no doubt that the greater number of the younger readers of a public library belong to the second of the two cla.s.ses referred to--those who have none to guide them in the choice of their books. The most of these come, of course, simply for amus.e.m.e.nt, without a thought of any better use of the library. But a few come with other and higher aims. Some, with no specially strong tastes or more than ordinary capacities, merely wish to read that which will cultivate their minds and increase their knowledge, or will be profitable to them in their work. A very few there are, however, in every large town, with intellects of no mean order and strong ambitions, who turn to the library instinctively for that which will satisfy the cravings of their intellects and the promptings of their ambitions. A youth with the instincts of a Lincoln or a Webster comes to read the history of his country. Another, with the latent powers of a Nasmyth, a Stevenson, or an Arkwright, wants the books which will give full play to his inventive faculties. Another finds a strange and irresistible attraction in natural phenomena, in the habits of plants and animals, in the formation of the rocks and the hills, in the aspects of the skies and the movements of the stars. Now, it will depend very much upon the first choice of their books, and the subsequent direction of their reading, whether they will become men useful to the communities in which they live and add substantial material to the sum of human knowledge, as statesmen, inventors, naturalists, or astronomers. The danger is that, for lack of proper guidance and restraint, they will dissipate their mental energies and lose sight of all high aims by too much and too vague reading. If the public library is to be in fact, what it is in theory, an educating power second only to the church and the school, and supplementing the work of both, there must be some method devised by which such readers as these may be helped to choose the right books.