not be a perfect librarian and read, because he is immediately lost. I do not like to hold that view. I rather hold to the view that the ordinary librarian, perhaps I should say the model librarian, should be a guide, philosopher and friend, and I do not doubt that many of you are very real guides, philosophers and friends to those who are seeking for perhaps they know not what and whom you can direct in right channels with incalculable good to their after life. It is absolutely true that in our modern life we need that guidance. I do not know that I could put it better than in the words of another great book lover, and good library lover too, our friend Robert Louis Stevenson of imperishable memory, who said once there was a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people in the world who if they were not engaged in a conventional occupation were in a state of coma; that the few hours they did not dedicate to a furious toiling in the gold mill were an absolute blank. It is your high privilege to supply that blank; it is your priceless privilege to fill the hours of life which have to be a blank because we cannot train ourselves for them in this more material age, to fill them up with a companionship and with an influence of the great thoughts of the great writers of all ages." Concluding, he expressed his pleasure at the prospect of entertaining the delegates at the Experimental Farm on the following Saturday.

The CHAIRMAN: The real president of the Canadian Club found it impossible to be in Ottawa to-night, and I am the poor substitute for Dr. Otto J. Klotz, who has been a great pillar of strength in Ottawa to those who love books and use books. He deputed me to say that he was exceedingly sorry he could not meet so many old friends of his as would surely be in attendance, and still more sorry because he was deprived of the joy of thus paying a little more back to those who love books and use books for all that books and learning have done for him. He is one of our good men. I am sorry he is not here.

We are delighted to have a woman as your president; and in calling on Mrs. Elmendorf to respond may I say-this comes to me after meeting her yesterday and to-day-that she is altogether a woman of whom it may be said in relation to her office as president of the American Library Association, "thy gen tleness has helped to make it great."

The PRESIDENT: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the American Library Association,-I am sure that I but express what you are all feeling in saying that this royal welcome to the Dominion of Canada makes us not only happy but very much honored. Some members of the associa tion are already at home in their own capital, being keepers of "kings' treasuries" of Canada itself. Others of us are librarians from hither and yon in the country beyond the border, but we have all come with "joy and goodly gree" to sit in council in the very capital of the lovely land which is so loyally and affectionately

"Daughter in her Mother's house."

A small party of us came across the border, as William Morris's heroes are wont to move, "by night and cloud," and when we reached the boundary line a sudden inspiration took us and we stooped down and silently, gently gath ered that boundary line in our hands and brought its firm lengths with us. I hold what might represent its shining links here in my hands. Therefore, while we visit here with you, in the very capital of the Dominion, while we hold that boundary line thus in our possession, from Boston Harbor down the coast through New York and Charleston to Key West, along the Gulf to New Orleans, across the great West to Pasadena, up the Pacific coast line to Seattle, from East to West, from North to South, there is no let or hindrance to the lines of influence which go forth. Those lines of influence run free without chance for knot or tangle or any such thing.

I hope you will not need to try whether

them, beneath them, is a change which is fundamental, a change in attitude which is essential as no mere form or method can be. It consists in the birth and development-not indeed of a new characteristic in either book or reader, or the discovery of new potencies in the one or new sensibilities in the other-but of a new sense of responsibility on the part of the library in the utilization of the one for the benefit of the other. It is an incident of democracy.

Now, so far as democracy means the participation of the community as a whole in the conduct of its affairs the form of it has existed with us in the United States for generations; and the substance of it has existed throughout the Anglo-Saxon world. But democracy ought to mean something more: it ought to mean the participation of every individual in its opportunities. And a constitution of society which still left the resources for power and intellectual direction in the hands of the few was in effect an aristocracy, and no complete democracy. Among these resources a chief is education. And the practical monopoly of education-and of books as an element in it-meant a monopoly of influence also, a monopoly which survived after limitations of caste were removed and the opportunities for wealth became widely diffused. Against it the free public school, the easily available college, the cheaply procurable newspaper and magazine, and the free public library fought and are fighting their fight in the interest of the prerogative of the Individual, in the endeavor to equip him as an independent and co-equal unit, so that the actual constitution of society shall accord with its political form, and indeed assure the efficiency and the permanence of the form.

So, having provided for the mass the interest has of late centred upon the individual.

Meantime, with the evolution from homogeneity to heterogeneity the individual himself has become more and more diversifiled in trait, aptitude and need; so that

the treatment of him by the agencies acting for the community as a whole has also had to become varied. Not merely that, but pursuing its responsibilities, to become affirmative, where before, so far as it existed, it was merely responsive.

Now the service of school and college furnishing definite instruction and perhaps training, to an organized body of youth, within a limited age, and under control, can be reasonably systematized and standardized. But the library is to furnish not merely education but enlightenment, and even culture, to the community at large-without respect to age, and without subordination to control. It cannot impose, it does not control. It may recommend, but it cannot direct. It must still respond to a need voluntarily expressed; but its duty is held to go further: it must remind that the need exists,-it must even inspire the need, that is to say, the consciousness of it. In this way it is engaged in creating the very demand which later it seeks to satisfy.

Now this duty upon it accounts for the prodigious energy in the effort itself, and the activity and range of the discussion, which are the characteristics of the modern library movement, particularly in English speaking America. It accounts for the incessant repetition of explanation, of exhortation, of recited experience, which give to a present-day library conference something of the aspect of a revival meeting.

To librarians of the older school these are somewhat distasteful; to librarians of the more modern school already convinced and experienced, they may be tedious; but they seem necessary still for the enlightenment and encouragement of others newly entering upon the problem, of a public not yet fully familiar with the relations of it to their own welfare, and to the helpful solution of local problems where the idea meets conditions still impeding: for the field is vast and conditions are still very unequal.

The efforts, still inchoate, include also many devices which are crude and of