Chapter XVII: Part 17

A librarian, through personal intercourse, can become a powerfully educative influence in his community, and start intellectual impulses that will not subside during his lifetime, but go on widening and blessing indefinitely. Let him become the father confessor of minds in his town or city; the priest of the intellect, to whom all men shall bring all their mental problems, all their dubious enigmas of the brain. He will not be able to solve all their puzzles or untie all their knots; but perhaps he will be able to hold the candle for a little while, while they struggle with the knots themselves. Let him always hold the candle, and talk pleasantly while he is holding it.

This matter of being pleasant in a library is really the first and great commandment. There should be an air of welcome inside that is pleasanter than the sunshine outdoors. The deathlike stillness and tomblike hush, the sepulchral gloom, the graveyard silence that sometimes prevails in libraries, should not be encouraged. Make people feel at home. The library here can learn a good lesson from the barroom. There are no signs up in a barroom intimating that loud talking is not allowed, nobody walks on tiptoes, everybody is welcomed heartily and encouraged to stay, and men find a sympathetic friendliness there who find it nowhere else. John Wesley said we should not allow the devil to monopolize all the good tunes. The library should not allow the barroom to monopolize all the spirit of human friendliness and good cheer. I am sincerely glad that the old type of librarian is passing out--a man so dignified that children were afraid of him, whose face was so long that his chin dragged on the floor. We want human men with blood in them in a library; men who like men and love children; men who can make themselves agreeable to men, women, children, and dogs. Let us make life as pleasant in a library as a mother's twilight hour with her children, and we shall raise up great families for the afterdays, who shall look back upon us as their intellectual parents, and rise up after we are gone and call our memories blessed.

There are three classes of books--books that give pleasure, books that give information, and books that give inspiration. The first class has its thousands of readers, the second its hundreds, and the third its tens. It is a good thing to read books for pleasure--it is the most innocent kind of drunkenness I know about; but that reading books merely for pleasure may develop into a kind of intellectual dissipation is something that we know from experience; for who is there of us who has not sinned? But reading books merely for pleasure is something we should outgrow in childhood, just as we do stilts and marbles and the game of tag. It is a better thing to read books for information. It is one of the healthiest joys of the normal mind to be forever learning something; forever learning and forever coming to the knowledge of the truth. It is the best thing, however, to read books for inspiration. And this is a class of readers into which many of the frequenters of the public libraries never graduate. Ah! the pity of it! Books that lift us out of ourselves and the fogs and fumes and dust of our little treadmill routines into the ampler ether of loftier altitudes--into the grandeurs of life! Emerson and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Whitman--do men love such as these and remain little men? No, this is the meat from which giants are grown; here is the food for souls. Now it seems to me it is the duty of the good librarian, one who believes in the august nature of his profession, to lead up his readers by all devices within his power, by imperceptible gradations, through the books that please and the books that inform, to the books that inspire. And the librarian who drops a boy before he learns to love John Milton has only brought him half his journey, and has dropped him before he has reached the destination to which his fare was paid.

Why do not people read the best books? One reason is they never see them. It is a librarian's business to keep them in sight, his next business is to read them himself, and his next business is to talk about them whenever he can get an audience of fifty, or five, or one; to write about them in his monthly bulletins and let every man know he can get them, and welcome, by stretching out his hand. We all know how Tom Sawyer got his fence painted. He made all the boys in his neighborhood believe that fence painting was great fun. The librarian should make all the boys in his neighborhood believe that reading the best books is genuine pleasure. They can be brought to an appreciation of this pleasure as one is brought to the height of a tableland of a great continent, by gradations so gradual that they seem to be walking on a flat surface.

I believe that the great destiny of the public library is as yet but faintly foreseen. The plain truth is that the library has not tried yet to do its best. It has opened it doors and let people come in, if they so desire, or if they happen to be passing that way. No successful auctioneer does business according to any such method. On the contrary he lifts up his voice to all it may concern, and to all that do not care that there are about to be great bargains at his place. The business man who opens his store and then forever holds his peace has his solitude very infrequently interrupted by customers. The church that has no missionary spirit is as tepid as the old church of Laodicea. The schoolmaster whose pupils absent themselves too frequently collects his daily audience, even if he has to call in the services of the truant officer. All this is written with something of the same wisdom. I do not believe it should always wait for people to come to it; it should go to the people. Every family in every city or town where there is a library should be offered a library card, or as many cards as it has adult members. Sometimes there is so much red tape prerequisite to obtaining a library card that a bashful man does not dare to make the attempt. Let us not shut the people off from the books that they have paid for by a barbed wire fence of red tape. Let every man or woman, yes, or child, too, that is old enough, be personally canvassed and offered a library card. Then sell him a catalog at cost price, or better still, at less than cost, and tell him how to use it. Ah, but our trustees will say, this will cost something. Yes, it will cost something, but it will be a tremendously profitable investment, and pay immense dividends later on in a more intelligent citizenship and wiser and happier men.

From all this I wish it might be inferred that no librarian can be too great for his position. It is not easy for him to have too much knowledge, too much tact, too much consecration to his work, too exalted an estimate of his possibilities. He should not have a mind with a flange on it, so that it forever runs on the small rail along the dusty roadbeds of routine. Let him originate, let him innovate, let him blaze his path with the pioneers--let him think.

THE USE OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY

Part of an address by President Angell of the University of
Michigan--educator, diplomat and statesman--at the
dedication of the Ryerson Library Building in Grand Rapids,
Mich., Oct. 8, 1904. To advise a reader, Pres. Angell
thinks, one must know something of his personal aptitudes.
General advice about "good reading" is seldom of great
service. A modern note by a great man.

James Burrill Angell was born in Scituate, R.I., Jan. 7,
1829, graduated at Brown University, and after studying
abroad, became eminent as an educator, holding first a
professorship in his alma mater and then serving
successively as president of the Universities of Vermont and
Michigan. He was U.S. minister to China in 1880-81 and
served on important international commissions. His works on
international law and on education are standard. He died on
April 1, 1916.

Now that your benefactor has so nobly done his part, it remains for the city to see that the library is maintained and managed in an effective manner. It would not only be an act of ingratitude, but it would be a mockery, if in such an edifice as this we should not find a good and growing and well administered library. There is no more important commission in your city than the commission charged with the care of your library. Let us hope that they will always be chosen with special regard to their fitness for their official duty and without regard to their party affiliations.

Especially is wisdom needed in the selection of your books. It is not so difficult to choose books for the cultivated and scholarly readers. But in a city library you must provide for all your population. Particular care should be had to procure books attractive and useful to your artisans and mechanics and common laborers. They should be led to feel that this is the place where they can most profitably spend a spare hour and can find something to bring new brightness into their monotonous lives. The efforts which you have already initiated to make the library serviceable to the pupils in your schools must now be redoubled. The teachers and the library authorities must always contrive to cooperate heartily. The multiplication of libraries in this country has already elevated the work of the librarian to the dignity of a distinct profession. And no profession promises to be more useful. In addition to the proper organization and care of the library, the influence which a competent librarian can wield in his guidance of the reading and studies of the young is seldom outweighed by that of the teacher or the preacher. In no manner can a generous appropriation of funds for the support of a library be more wisely expended than in securing a competent librarian.

Judging by my own experience and by my observation of others, I doubt whether the guide books which have been written to tell one what works to read have been of great service. The simple reason why they are not very helpful is that to advise one what to read, you should know something of his aptitudes and taste and something of his plans of life. General advice is a shot in the air. It may hit nothing.

But a competent person may give helpful counsels to the young concerning useful methods of reading whatever one does read, and may indeed specify what are some of the best books on certain topics. A good librarian, if leisure enough is left him, may attract and help willing auditors by occasional lectures or informal talks on how to read in a library. But personal suggestions, to meet particular needs, are the most fruitful of good. And just here the school teachers, if competent to advise, can be of the utmost service. In no way can the library be made so valuable as by the hearty and systematic co-operation of the librarian and the teachers. It would be very useful if they could from time to time meet to confer upon the best methods of securing harmonious action. For it is the generation now coming on to the stage who are chiefly to profit by the use of this library. It is through them that the city is to receive its chief benefit. To incite them to read, to train them to right habits of reading, to inspire them with high ideals of what one should seek and love in reading, should be the aspiration of parents and teachers, if this library is to yield its largest harvest of good.

Like all good things, this library may to some persons bring no good; it may even be made an instrument of harm. It may bring no good, because it may be utterly neglected. No doubt there are many families who have never drawn a book from its shelves. It may bring no good, it may even cause intellectual, not to say moral injury, if it is misused. It is possible to choose from any great library such passages from works and to peruse them in such a spirit as to gratify and stimulate prurient desires, or if one does not descend to so unworthy and shameful an act, one may read in such a manner as to be guilty of intellectual dissipation. What we may call the desultory readers are exposed to this danger. They pick up whatever book or magazine comes first to hand, provided they are sure that it makes no tax upon their mental powers. They spend their time dawdling over a chapter of this book, then over a chapter of that, as men of the town now join this gay companion for an hour and then another for the next hour for frivolous talk and profitless gossip, and so wander aimless through the day without any fruitage to show for their time. They lose the power, if they ever had it, of consecutive study and thought and discourse on any theme whatever.

I do not mean to intimate that we should never come to this library to read for pleasure and entertainment. One of the great and proper uses of books is to refresh and amuse us in our hours of weariness and depression. Like the society of our choicest friends, they may wisely be sought for the sole purpose of diverting our minds from the flood of cares and troubles which come in upon all of us. The library may well be

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

Or in our happy and merry moods we may seek congenial company in the creations of Cervantes and Moliere and Shakespeare and Dickens and Mark Twain. Reading for pastime is a commendable occupation, if wisely followed. Lowell in his paradoxical style tells us that what Dr. Johnson called browsing in a library is the only way in which time can be profitably wasted. But to browse profitably one should have an appetite only for what has some merit. I have known lads born with a literary instinct as unerring as that of the bee for finding honey, to have the free run of a large library and come out with a wonderful range of good learning. Such instances show the unwisdom of having the same rules to guide every one in his reading. In such cases as those just cited, the example and taste of the parents often determine the success of the experiment. The books they talk about fondly at table and quote from freely and appositely are likely to arrest the attention of the child. Therefore we may say that the home as truly as the school may largely determine what advantage shall be gained in this library. Parents who for their children's sake are careful what guests they admit to their house and what companionships they counsel the children to form may well consider what reading comes under their roof and what literary tastes they encourage in their household.

In these days when reviews and magazines and school histories of literature abound, there seems ground for one caution to youthful readers. It is, not to be content with reading about great books and great men, but to study the works themselves of great men. Many of the outlines of English literature, for example, which pupils in school are required to study, contain dates and names and brief descriptions of masterpieces, and from the nature of the case can contain little else. But cramming the memory with these is not learning the literature. Reading, mastering, and learning to appreciate and love the great works of a great author is better than to learn the dry facts in the lives of a score of authors. So our magazines and reviews treat us to criticism sometimes wise, sometimes unwise, of many authors. But all these are of little value until the works themselves of the authors have been studied. With the works the biographies of the authors should be read in order to appreciate the conditions under which the works were produced. But far better is it to gain a thorough acquaintance with one great writer's life and works than to learn a few fragmentary facts at second hand about the lives and writings of many.

One of the most difficult questions to settle in these days in the selection of books for a library or in directing the reading of the young is, how large shall be the proportion of fiction in a library or in the reading of any one. Just now we are flooded with fiction, stretching from the short story of the magazine to the two-volume novel. I observe that nearly two-thirds of the volumes drawn from this library in 1901-02 are classed under the two heads of juvenile fiction and fiction. And I suppose the experience of other popular libraries is similar to yours. This shows at least that there is a great craving for fiction. That craving a library like this must to a fair degree strive to meet. Nor need we regret that there is a strong desire for sterling works of fiction. They stimulate and nourish the imagination. They give us vivid pictures of life. They portray for us the working of human passions. They give a reality to history. Sometimes they cultivate a taste for reading in those who would otherwise be inclined to read little, and so lead them to other branches of literature. But, on the other hand, I think it must be confessed that a great deal of the fiction which is deluging the market is the veriest trash, or worse than trash. Much of it is positively bad in its influence. It awakens morbid passions. It deals in most exaggerated representations of life. It is vicious in style.

It is a most delicate task for the authorities of a library like this to draw the line between the works of fiction which should be and those which should not be found on its shelves. As to the individual reader, the best we can do is to elevate his taste as rapidly as we can by placing in his hands fiction attractive at once in its matter and in its style. We must hope that with the cultivation of taste to which our best schools aspire, we can rear a generation which will prefer the best things in literature to the inferior. That is the reason why the teachers of languages and literature in our schools should be not mere linguists, but persons of refined literary taste, who will imbue their pupils with a love for the truest and highest in every literature which they can read.

I would like to commend to my young friends who desire to profit by the use of this library the habit of reading with some system and of making brief notes upon the contents of the books they read. If, for instance, you are studying the history of some period, ascertain what works you need to study and finish such parts of them as concern your theme. Do not feel obliged to read the whole of a large treatise, but select such chapters as touch on the subject in hand, and omit the rest for the time. Young students often get swamped and lose their way in Serbonian bogs of learning, when they need to explore only a simple and plain pathway to a specific destination. Have a purpose and a plan and adhere to it in spite of alluring temptations to turn aside into attractive fields that are remote from your subject. If in a note book you will on finishing a work jot down the points of importance in the volume and the references to the page or chapter, you will frequently find it of the greatest service to run over these notes and refresh your memory. If you are disposed to add some words of comment or criticism on the book, that practice also will make you a more attractive reader, and will make an interesting record for you to consult.

COMMUNITY CENTER SERVICE

This is the newest phase of library work and the most
convincing evidence of its socialization. There is little in
print about its early stages; its classics are still in the
making. We quote only three papers here.

THE LIBRARY AS A SOCIAL CENTRE

The opening address at the Red Wing meeting of the Minnesota
Library Association, Oct. 12, 1905, by Miss Countryman,
librarian of the Minneapolis Public Library. The "public,"
Miss Countryman thinks, "is no indefinite, intangible
somebody; it is just 'we'"--the statement of library
socialization in a nutshell.

Gratia Alta Countryman was born at Hastings, Minn., in
November, 1866, and graduated, with the B.S. degree, at the
University of Minnesota in 1889. In that same year she
entered the service of the Minneapolis Public Library, and
she was assistant librarian at the resignation of Dr. James
K. Hosmer in 1904, succeeding him as librarian.

During these latter days of enormous library activity, we have been conscientiously examining the functions of a library; we have been trying all sorts of methods to popularize it, to advertise it. We have asked for and listened to the criticism of outsiders, and by the light thrown upon it through this prism have separated our work into its elemental parts and seen its various hues.

We used to erect a library as an altar to the gods of learning; now, to use Mr. Dana's words, we erect it as an altar to the "gods of good fellowship, joy and learning." So you see, our ideals are constantly rising, our horizons ever broadening, and our work continually increasing, both in extent and in depth. We might well have considered our hands fairly full to have dealt alone with this god of learning, but we find ourselves embracing the opportunity for additional service to the gods of good fellowship and joy.

It might do us good to consider tonight what we are doing for the cause of learning, what the library has done to increase serious reading and study, and how it may further the educational work of the world. This question is ever present with us, and can stand any amount of discussion. But it is the gods of good fellowship and joy that we are discussing tonight, the library not as a center of learning but as a social center.

We are dealing with a small crowd of people whom we call "our public." Who are the public? Why, you and I, and my family, and others just like us. They want just the same things that we do, and to be accommodated in just the same way that we do. The public is no indefinite, intangible somebody, it is just "we."

We talk about the people being hungry for books and information. Have you found it so? Then why do we have free libraries and free schools? People are willing to sacrifice for something that they are very hungry for. Do you hunger and thirst to read Homer and Shakespeare, and Emerson and Arnold, and good histories and literature? Do you, when you are tired after a day's work, take home a scientific work or a treatise on civics? No, you are just a little sample of the public, and you think you need to read a pleasant, entertaining, restful book. You aren't hungry for information, and, as a matter of fact, the person who delights in study and has a fine taste for the best in literature has one of the "gifts extremely rare." Most of us are practical, everyday, working people, with a very limited time for reading, and this public whom we serve is just like us. A few of them will love to read the best, many of them will want information at intervals, a large proportion want recreative reading, and the vast majority use the library not at all. Now the former, who want and love the library, you need not be troubled about. They will naturally come to the library, and you will find pleasure in serving them. But these latter classes who either come for pleasure or come not at all must be drawn and held through the social instincts, and through their desire for pleasure. Every human being must have social life. We seek company and companionship with whom we can find mutual pleasure. We may find it in friendly gatherings, social clubs, or music or conversation or games, but social pleasure of some sort is sought by all of us, great and small, in town and country alike. In the city there is usually plenty of opportunity--I might almost say that there is a surfeit--and one must pick and choose. But in the towns and villages it is often different; good amusement and profitable pleasures are not always to be had, and being social beings, the social craving is satisfied with whatever means may be at hand. Young people especially can not isolate themselves, or live unto themselves. Just where is the library going to stand in this matter? Is there anything which we can do to satisfy these natural desires and to enter more vitally into the lives of the people? This is the question to take home and think about.

As individuals, we are coming to have an enormous interest in other human lives, there is a sense of social obligation upon us; we have come to know that personal righteousness is not all that is required of us, but that we must help to realize the social righteousness. The library has the duty of being all things to all men. It is no longer simply a repository of books, it is exactly what Mr. Carnegie calls it, the cradle of democracy, filled with the democratic spirit, and it endeavors, as far as circumstances permit, to minister to all the needs of the community in which it dwells. The library stands for progress, the progress of its town, and this does not mean increasing the material prosperity of the people, though that may follow, but it chiefly means the raising of the moral, social and intellectual standards of all its people, and helping men and women to be more effective in every way. The library does not exist for one side only of the life of the people, but for every side, and if it fails to provide for those who seek amusement, it shirks a duty and renounces a privilege. The sooner we unveil the "gods of joy and good fellowship" in our library the better; the sooner we make the library a centre for all the activities among us that make for social efficiency the better.

Of course there are natural limitations to the kind of work which a library can do, and in helping to further the spirit of good fellowship and to furnish pleasure, we must keep within such limits as are consistent with the spirit of a library. The library can appeal to people in other ways than by books alone, as we shall consider later, yet as books are our chief tools, it is natural to think first of giving pleasure by that method. One of our chiefest ways of late years has been through the children's room. The children get book instruction and supplementary reading and enforced book interests, all of which are needed for their development, in the schoolroom. But in the children's room at the library furnished especially for them, with low tables, picture books and low shelves containing fairy stories and all their favorite authors, they settle down to satisfy their own especial individual tastes. Then there is the story hour, of which we shall hear to-morrow. Many of the children have never learned the pleasure of reading. They do not belong to cultured homes and the presence of books. Many of them never heard a Mother Goose jingle or a nonsense verse, and a book is an unlearned delight. But what child, even of this kind, does not love to hear stories, and listening breathlessly, would not come again and again. Somehow it seems as if we could not discharge our social obligation until we had gone into the by-ways and hedges and gathered in these scraps of society, and taught them the pleasures of a book. The children, once acquainted with the library, will always count it among their friends, and it will forever remain a social centre to them.

We grown ups are not so different from the children; we, too, like a story, and we, too, want to read the things that cheer and entertain us. We agreed a moment ago that we, as well as our public, were liable to leave the serious books for the infrequent study hour and to spend our leisure evenings with the fascinating novel. Well, I do not know of any better way to give amusement and pleasure than to furnish the people with the books they want, in which they can be interested and absorbed. The "cares that infest the day" will fold their wings better under the spell of a good story than any other way. I think we need not be frightened when libraries are accused of being only fiction distributors, for it is a library's function to amuse as well as to instruct, and if people will seek amusement through the library, so much the better for the people. It is natural that the people should feel a curiosity about the newest book and want to read what other people are talking about. This adds also to pleasant social intercourse, and gives people a common subject of conversation. Fiction is bound to be more and more an interpretation of life by which we see the motives and the currents in other souls. We need not be afraid to supply good, wholesome fiction and to use it in establishing social relations with our people, so that the adults as well as the children shall feel a real pleasure in coming to the library.

Many of our libraries are now housed in beautiful buildings, in which case, the building as well as the books becomes a means of social influence. If there is need of a home for social intercourse and amusement, the library may legitimately attempt to furnish such a home within its walls. If there are social or study clubs, organized labor guilds or missionary societies, or any other organizations, encourage them to meet at the library, find out what they need, let them find out that the library is their cooperative partner. And so with the schools and industries, of which I have not time to speak. The whole building at all times should be managed in the broadest spirit of hospitality; the atmosphere should be as gracious, kindly and sympathetic as one's own home. Then do away with all unnecessary restrictions, take down all the bars, and try to put face to face our friends the books and our friends the people. Introduce them cordially, then stand aside and let them make each other's blessed acquaintance.

Some have tried smoking rooms, had boy's club rooms and games, and many have tried simply to make the rooms homelike and cheery, and all of their experience is valuable to us.

It may be that no one of the plans used by other libraries may fit your case, for it is not necessarily good for you because some one else has used it successfully. But with any plan do not expect immediate results, for almost everything that succeeds permanently has a slow, gradual development; that which flashes up quickly usually dies down suddenly. Be willing to work out a good plan if you have one, and be willing to study your people and all of their interests before you shape your plans.

THE LIBRARY AND THE SOCIAL CENTRE

By a great expert in library field-work as done by one of
our most active library commissions. Miss Lutie E. Stearns,
of whom a sketch will be found in Vol. I. of this series, is
now a lecturer at large, but at the writing of this paper,
which is reprinted from _The Wisconsin Library Bulletin_ for
May, 1911, she was in the service of the Library Commission
of that state.

It is coming to be an axiom in library economy that "the worth of a book is in its use." For this reason, librarians everywhere are devoting themselves to what is called "library extension" through the building of branches, and the establishment of deposit stations in schools, factories, stores, club-houses, police stations, fire-engine houses, etc. Experience has shown that where no efforts are made along the line of library extension only 10 per cent. or at the most 20 per cent. of the people are reached in any given community. If we wish to have wholesome literature become "the burden of the common thought" we must place good books within easy reach of all. Libraries should be quick to realize that the social centre offers a most excellent opportunity to reach those that might not otherwise take the time to avail themselves of library privileges. The free public library should therefore be made an important part of social centre work through active and sympathetic cooperation.

Where libraries can afford proper facilities, there is no reason why the library building should not serve as the social centre for the community, as this institution differs from the schoolhouse, in cities where parochial schools exist, in being neutral on the religious question and therefore acceptable to all denominations. Wherever the social centre may be, whether in library building or schoolhouse, strong emphasis should be placed on the use of books. A special librarian, of peculiar fitness, should be appointed either by the library or the social centre authorities. This man or woman should be earnestly altruistic in his or her desire to fit the right book to the right person at the right time. It may be that this will mean the issuance of a primer in English to an adult Slav who has recently arrived in this country, or it may be the loan of a novel more wholesome in tone though just as sentimental as one by Bertha M. Clay, the author requested. Again, the leader of the boy gang may be persuaded to give up the reading of the lurid "nickel library" in favor of Custer and Grinnell's truthful Indian experiences. Such selection involves a wide range of books in the social centre library, from well-bound and attractive editions of the classics down to the latest, most wholesome novel. The boys that frequent the gymnasium may be won by Barbour's latest football story. The raffia worker should find interest in Priestman's Handicrafts. An up-to-date and authoritative encyclopedia, a good dictionary, a World almanac, and other popular reference books should be supplied and instruction given in their use. Debating material should be sought and every inducement offered for individual research.

Those who cannot afford to take correspondence courses in the various trades and crafts should find material in the social centre library for self-education. James Russell Lowell has said that the best part of every man's education is that which he gives himself, and it is for this that the library at the social centre should furnish the opportunity and the means. Again, there should be books of a cheerful sort for tired workers so that, as in William Morris's Earthly Paradise, they may

"Forget six counties overhung with smoke,
Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke."

Wholesome novels should be found in plenty for both men and women, together with books that inspire with courage for life's daily round, such as Hugh Black's Work, Gannett's Blessed be drudgery, Hyde's Art of optimism, Emerson's Character and heroism, and Wagner's Courage. Each book in the library's collection should serve one or all three purposes--to inform, to inspire, or to refresh.

The rules for the issuance of books should be made as simple as possible. Borrowers should not be restricted to one book at a time if more can be used; that is, a novel should be loaned with a book for study. No guarantee should be required except the borrower's signature.

A reading room should be made an attractive feature in connection with the issuance of books. The library and reading room should be well lighted and heated, and order and quiet should be insisted upon. The reading table should be supplied with an abundance of the best of the popular magazines. The Technical World, Popular mechanics, Amateur work, and the Scientific American, will be found to be strong magnets for attracting the interest of the boys and young men. The World's work, Collier's weekly, and the American magazine, are the three great exponents of optimism in our national life which should find a place on the reading room tables, as should McClure's, Everybody's, Hampton's, Scribner's, Harper's, Century, and the Atlantic. In the small towns the local paper and one or two of the near-by metropolitan dailies should also be taken.

Attractive libraries and reading rooms make less attractive the seductions of other places. George Eliot said long ago, "Important as it is to direct the industries of men, it is not so important as to wisely direct their leisure." It is indeed true, as a critic of our national life has said, that "The use of a nation's leisure is the test of its civilization." To win people to a love of good literature, to bring back the old days of reading and meditation, are two of the great problems that confront the present-day librarian. In the words of one earnest library worker, "The modern library movement is a movement to increase by every possible means the accessibility of books, to stimulate their reading and to create a demand for the best. Its motive is helpfulness; its scope, instruction and recreation; its purpose, the enlightenment of all; its aspiration, still greater usefulness."

WHERE NEIGHBORS MEET

Extracts from a special report on the social work of the St.
Louis Public Library made in 1917 by Margery Quigley, then
librarian of its Divoll Branch.

Margery Closey Quigley was born in Los Angeles, Cal., Sept.
16, 1886, and graduated from Vassar College. She entered the
service of the St. Louis Public Library in February, 1909,
studied at the New York State Library School in 1914-15, and
in August, 1918, became librarian of the Free Library in
Endicott, N.Y.

The experience of the St. Louis Public Library goes to prove that no matter what the neighborhood may be, and however well-supplied it already is with meeting places, there is always room for the library auditorium and club rooms without subtracting in any way from the business of the other agencies. In fact, they seem to increase each other's use.

Of our six branch buildings, one is located in the heart of the older ghetto, one in Carondelet, two in purely residential neighborhoods, one at the Soulard civic center, where nine or ten European languages are represented, and the sixth in the older German section of the north side, near the river.

About each branch is the full quota of meeting places required by any given neighborhood--moving-picture houses, community halls to let for dances and entertainments, churches, saloons, Turnvereins, settlements, club houses, running the gamut from "lid clubs" to the Artists' Guild, Masonic temples and public schools, which are now managed on the community-center plan. Several of the branches have all these within a radius of five or six blocks, and still they must show the "standing-room-only" sign to many of the clubs that apply for the use of the library halls.

The remarkable feature of this wider use of the library is that in spite of the increase of meetings, there has been no spirit of competition. Between the community halls and the library, for example, there has been no rivalry for statistics of use. Cabanne branch, in the heart of perfectly equipped institutions which foster all sorts of clubs, shows more than 52 meetings a month during the last nine months, while our report of 1907 said of this branch: "There has been an average of nearly six meetings a month in the building."

Neighborhood clubs meet in the halls which best suit their purposes, and no agency seeks to move any one of them to a different roof. In the Crunden Branch neighborhood, the Socialists meet in a synagogue and a Yiddish church meets in the library.

The city recreation department reports that the library's work and the department's community work at the Patrick Henry School and on the playgrounds, far from duplicating one another are supplementary.

In giving the free use of its meeting-rooms to any reputable group of persons, the St. Louis Public Library acts upon two principles which it cannot emphasize strongly enough. They are the same on which it buys its books; first, that the library stands for no propaganda but seeks to house all opinions, and second, that it makes no obvious attempt to reform or "uplift."

Although the books it buys must meet a certain standard in style and content, the day is past when library assistants seek to force down readers' throats books which "will be good" for them. In the same way, the meeting which it shelters must meet the standards of the community; but the Library has ceased to initiate or direct clubs and meetings, cultural or otherwise.

Community work can be successful only when it embodies the spontaneous expression of the neighborhood's own demand, whether it is from children, or women, or men. A chain of suffrage groups was successful, if numbers were an indication, in one neighborhood and a failure in another--from the same cause. In a neighborhood of illiterate foreign women with large families, one suffragist lecturer on the common law of England was greeted by an audience consisting of one deaf old lady and fifty Jewish children under twelve, who had heard that candy was to be given away.

Many of the meetings that wither and die are conceived in the finest spirit of service. If they aim to interest the whole neighborhood, irrespective of cliques and prejudices, they almost always fail--if, as we Americans are supposed to do, we figure failure and success in terms of quantity. Utopian schemes cannot long survive to-day, housed or not in the scholarly and friendly surroundings of the library. A united Ukraine cannot absorb the attention of its supporters half as continuously as the possibility of a new job in Ford's factory, and a "decent dancing club" cannot always endure in the face of profits to be made from a river excursion.

Probably of all municipal institutions, the library, while maintaining its dignified and quiet atmosphere, may become the least formal and most neighborly. It is a library truism that a librarian can tell from repeated experiences just when a borrower is calling at the library to announce her engagement or to proclaim that his new job has been secured. Countless other bits of everyday news are exchanged over the desk with real profit to the library and to the visitor. We feel in St. Louis that the so-called wider use of the plant is only a tangible expression of this same friendly relationship, justified on the one hand by its economy and on the other, and to a far larger extent, by its contribution to the community's legitimate social life.

Very fortunately for the tax-payer, and for the average reader, the public library does not look upon its branches as intellectual clinics for the poor. Like the public schools, its problem is to serve "all the children of all the people," and consequently in localities other than those where foreigners live, the same sort of branch building is erected, with an auditorium open under the same regulations and used to meet the needs of the particular neighborhood. The so-called "middle class" has as fair a chance and as "good a time" in the library auditoriums as the foreign poor.

When there are public meetings at the Carondelet library, speakers from other parts of the city invariably come late. They begin their addresses with long apologies, saying that they have never been in the neighborhood before, and did not know where to find the library. They always seem amazed at the size and beauty of the building, and comment particularly on the pleasant club-rooms. One West End woman could not say enough in praise of everything, repeating continually, "and all this down here!"

Practically this same comment is made again and again in the main library, and in the other branches throughout the city. "All this down here," is equally true of seven auditoriums, each with a seating capacity of 200, and of club rooms and offices to the number of fifteen. In these halls were held, during the past year, practically as large a number of meetings as our equipment will permit. Omitting the meetings at Crunden and Soulard, practically all are held by the average sort of person--average financially, socially and intellectually. The very absence of the feeling that the club must make money, or must at least pay expenses, probably accounts for the long list of small clubs and board meetings which could almost as easily meet in the homes of members.

There are those who think that no one uses the auditoriums except very wealthy club-women, who set up Christmas trees for the poor. There is no more truth in this than there would be in saying that all the inhabitants of St. Louis are either immigrants or millionaires. In the total number of meetings at the library, what Ida Tarbell has termed "the shirtwaist crowd," is far in the majority. At practically every branch, the Simon-pure woman's clubs form at least fifteen per cent. of all the meetings. At the Cabanne branch, about fifty per cent. are made up of women. The Barr Branch Mothers' Circle, The Queen Hedwig Polish Women, and the Carondelet Women's Club are three names out of a list running almost to a hundred.

The masculine of "shirtwaist crowd" is "shirtsleeves crowd"; and this is equally well represented upon the schedules of all the branches. Miss Griggs, of the Barr Branch, writes:

"We seem now to have a number of new meetings that are held for discussion--but not many for study--casual, one-meeting-only affairs. For instance, the Royal Arcanum met to discuss what could be done about the increased rates. All the premiums were raised and those for older men raised far out of reason, so all the older members had a meeting down here, to discuss what action they could take. I am glad people come casually that way--and feel that we are open for something beside the regular study meetings. They sit around very informally, smoke, come in and out down stairs and do not have any very formal session.

"In common with the other branches, Barr has had political meetings. Some have been held just before elections and have been quite warm. On one occasion, the library was made a buzzing community center by a series of bombs that were set off in the street. Other and quieter meetings have been held by party committees, judges of elections and the like. The State Socialist party has twice held its conventions here, and each time the session lasted for four days. The meetings were opened with hymns, and the delegates had all-day sessions, from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. I think most of the partisan leaders feel that they are a little handicapped when they meet in the library--still, they come back occasionally.

"There are coming to be more purely social meetings of younger grade pupils. In some cases, these children are not organized, but merely claim to be in order to get the halls. In other cases, relatives who come with them to make application are frank to confess that they want the hall to avoid inconvenience at home, especially the protracted house-cleanings which are the pre-requisite at most home parties. One mother said that the last time there was a birthday party in her house, the man who lived upstairs, after rapping repeatedly on the floor to stop the children's noise, came down and said, that 'the party would simply have to bust up.' She wanted to hold this party in the library, because her husband had such a bad temper, that she was sure he would murder the man if such a thing happened again, and, of course, it _would_ happen again, for no children's party would ever be quiet enough to suit the man upstairs.

"Adult clubs as a whole ask very little of us beyond the occasional use of the telephone, and they often come and go without our being conscious of them. This is especially true of day-time meetings. It must be admitted, that in addition to those who are very friendly and those who do not make either criticism or appreciation articulate, there are some who break the monotony of the librarian's existence by thinking 'they owns the place,' to quote the janitor. The younger social meetings need considerable attention, too. They overflow upstairs, are always noisy and sometimes not as agreeable as they should be. A member of a new club of girls said, 'I guess we rented this building for the evening--we can make as much noise as we please.'"

Within certain limits, particularly the powder-cans and lead pencils of the staff, we want the clubs to think that they do own the place. The surest proof that the St. Louis plan works, is to have the scions of our democracy feel that they are getting their money's worth from the institution that their taxes support.

A group of young socialists was formed too late in the season to secure a regular meeting night. They finally decided that they would have to be satisfied with meeting, for the winter, at K----'s--a delicatessen store a few blocks away. K----'s has an advertisement every week in the Jewish Record, inviting men to come and read the papers there and make use of the free meeting-room. Like all Jewish delicatessens, this shop contains everything that any patron is willing to buy, and in addition, elaborates the coffee-house idea into any shape that circumstances may suggest. When the young men said individually on later occasions that they were not contented at the delicatessen, they always added, "It's because we feel so at home at the library; because we've always gotten books out there." The next winter their application was handed in several months in advance.

In a neighborhood where conditions are the exact antithesis of Crunden's, the same feeling exists. Miss Pretlow was talking one evening to a young man who belonged to a group giving a dancing party at Cabanne Library. She said that she could not but remark how well-dressed and well bred and altogether prosperous the dancers were. They very evidently could have met in any one of a number of large homes or could have paid for one of the best halls in the city; so she said to the young man, "How is it you do not rent Blank's Hall, but use the Library instead? I know it can't be the difference in cost that influences you." The young man answered in very evident astonishment: "Why, we like this place; we all grew up in this Library."

When adolescents of both sexes meet together, their meetings are purely for a good time. Their behavior is extremely immature from the social side; either very wooden or very uncontrolled. This is the period when the librarian must insist upon strict chaperonage, and it is also the period when resentment of discipline, or even of suggestion, runs high. They would no more follow the advice of the Librarian in the matter of invitations, introduction of wall-flowers and how a dance is to be "run off" generally, than they would copy her taste in dress, which they invariably consider very "old-maidy." The standards to which social clubs adhere rigidly are those observed in places of commercialized amusement. One group of boys met to teach each other dancing, where the girls would not see them. As it was a case of the blind leading the blind, a volunteer who had been teaching folk-dancing to the girls all winter, offered her services. After one trial she was _persona non grata_, because she wouldn't let them "rag."

Some of the dances are quite grim. One will not hear a note of laughter all the evening. Five or six girls will often come together. Those who know boys will dance with them, and between dances will not make the slightest effort to introduce their friends to possible partners. The friends, instead of resenting this inactivity, often sit all the evening on the side lines watching and chewing gum, apparently perfectly satisfied.