that which comes from improvidence, but from undeveloped or unused opportunity. So it becomes the duty of every community to make its contribution to the world, whether it be in the realm of invention, scientific discovery, or literature. And how is this to be done if genius and talent are allowed to die unborn for lack of opportunity to grow? Wonderful as has been the progress of the world's knowledge during the last century of scientific research, who will venture to say that it constitutes more than a fraction of what might have been if all the genius that remained dormant and unproductive could have been utilized? From what we know of isolated instances where mere chance has saved to the world great forces that make for the progress of humanity, we can infer what might have been realized, under happier conditions. Every librarian of experience, every administrator of traveling libraries, will recall such instances. One boy comes upon the right book, and the current of his life is changed; another reads a volume, and in his brain germinates the seed that blossoms into a great invention; in a chance hour of reading, a third finds in a page, a phrase, a word, the inspiration whose expression sets aflame the world. A master pen has vividly described the process:2

*

"Most of us who turn to any subject with love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume. When hot from play he would toss himself in a corner, and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on; if it were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with the Apocrypha in it. Something he must read when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of But, one vacation, a wet day sent him to the small home library to hunt once more for a book which might have some

men.

* * *

'George Eliot, "Middlemarch."

freshness for him. In vain! unless, indeed, he first took down a dusty row of volumes with gray-paper backs and dingy labels-the volumes of an old encyclopedia which he had never disturbed. It would at least be a novelty to disturb them. They were on the highest shelf, and he stood on a chair to get them down; but he opened the volume which he took first from the shelf; somehow one is apt to read in a makeshift attitude just where it might seem inconvenient to do so. The page he opened on was under the head of Anatomy, and the first passage that drew his eyes was on the valves of the heart. He was not much acquainted with valves of any sort, but he knew that valvæ were folding doors, and through this crevice came a sudden light startling him with his first vivid notion of finely-adjusted mechanism in the human frame. A liberal education had, of course, left him free to read the indecent passages in the school classics, but beyond a general sense of secrecy and obscenity in connection with his internal structure, had left his imagination quite unbiased, so that for anything he knew his brains lay in small bags at his temples, and he had no more thought of representing to himself how his blood circulated than how paper served instead of gold. But the moment of vocation had come, and before he got down from his chair the world was made new to him by a presentiment of endless processes filling the vast spaces planked out of his sight by that wordy ignorance which he had supposed to be knowledge. From that hour he felt the growth of an intellectual passion."

And in this wise the world gained a great physician.

All this may be said without disparagement to that phase of library usefulness which may be termed the recreative. There has been undue and unreasoning criticism of the library tendency to minister to the novel-reading habit. Many good people are inclined to decry the public library because not all its patrons confine their loans to books dealing with science, or with useful arts. In their judgment it is not the legitimate function of the public library to meet the public demand for fiction. These same good people would hardly urge that the freedom of the public parks should be limited to those who wish to make

botanical studies. The pure joy in growing things and fresh air and the song of uncaged birds, needs no knowledge of scientific terms in botany and ornithology. These privileges are promotive of the physical well-being of the people; correspondingly, healthy mental stimulus is to be found in "a sparkling and sprightly story which may be read in an hour and which will leave the reader with a good conscience and a sense of cheerfulness." Our own good friend, Mr. John Cotton Dana, has admirably epitomized the underlying philosophy:

"A good story has created many an oasis in many an otherwise arid life. Many-sidedness of interest makes for good morals, and millions of our fellows step through the pages of a story book into a broader world than their nature and their circumstances ever permit them to visit. If anything is to stay the narrowing and hardening process which specialization of learning, specialization of inquiry and of industry and swift accumulation of wealth are setting up among us, it is a return to romance, poetry, imagination, fancy, and the general culture we are now taught to despise. Of all these the novel is a part; rather, in the novel are all of these. But a race may surely find springing up in itself a fresh love of romance, in the high sense of that word, which can keep it active, hopeful, ardent, progressive. Perhaps the novel is to be, in the next few decades, part of the outward manifestation of a new birth of this love of breadth and happiness."

There is, then, no limitation to the scope of library extension save that enforced by meagerness of resource and physical ability to do. In the proper affiliation and correlation of all these forces which have been enumerated and of others suggested by them, will develop that process whereby the social betterment that today seems but a dream will be brought into reality. The form this combination will assume need give us no concern-whether its local physical expression shall be as in Boston a group of

buildings maintained as separate institutions; or as in Pittsburgh, a complete, related scheme of activities covered by one roof; as planned in Cleveland, a civic center with the public library giving it character and substance; or as in New York, where many institutions, remotely located but intimately associated, work toward a common end. Many roads may lead to a common center. Which one the wayfarer chooses is a matter of mere personal preference and of no importance, so that he wends his way steadily onwards towards the object of his attainment. In the evolution of these uplifting processes, the book shall stand as symbol, as the printed page shall serve as instrument.

NEXT STEPS1

F ALL human interests that pertain to intellectual improvement-social evolution, scientific achievement, educational progress, governmental advance, or humanitarian en

deavor, none has seemed too unimportant for consideration by library workers. Librarians have sought to identify their work with them all, to achieve contact with every individual, with groups of individuals and with communities as a whole. If intelligent method has sometimes seemed lacking, the enthusiasm and the self-denial of the missionary have been given in unstinted measure. To the home and to the mart, to the school and to the playground, to the workshop and to the laboratory, they have brought -whether asked or unsought-the best at their command.

Not out of abundance has the library attempted so much in such diverse places. Its meager resources have been spread over such vast fields that in spots the substance has seemed tenuous and transparent. Most insufficient, and perhaps least successful thus far, but suggesting the most important function of library activity and presaging its most significant development, is that branch of service associated with grammar and secondary schools. Here lies the most fertile field for

'Read before the New York Library Association at Haines Falls, Sept. 28, 1915.