sents an outlay of great sums of money as well as of vast amounts of thought and effort, that Mr. N. W. Harris, a rich banker of that city, has given $250,000 for establishing small cabinets of exhibits to be prepared by this museum and sent from school to school. These travelling exhibits are to be accompanied by brief lectures on the things represented in them. The idea is not a new one in educational practice; but it is to be hoped that the Chicago effort may arouse to new life much of this dead concrete educational material lying at the very doors of so many of our urban schools. There are also many good reasons for gathering together in every large community school, whether in the city or in the country, a collection of products and processes, of pictures and descriptions that help to an understanding and appreciation of geographical and historical facts or to a fuller and better knowledge of the animals, plants, and minerals found in the vicinity. Such a local museum can be made a matter of community pride as well as a thing of great educational value.

The Library in Education.

EXTENSION OF PUBLIC LIBRARY WORK.-Helen Lockwood Coffin calls attention, in the May issue of Everybody's, to the many changes that are occurring in the policy and work of the modern library. The fact that the public has been drifting away from the public library into other interests has led to many things that would have been regarded, even in the recent past, as entirely outside of the province of a library. As the public drifted away from the library, librarians and associations of librarians ceased discussing technicalities of method and devoted their time to inquiring into the causes of low library-appreciation. "Library conferences, instead of considering ways of cataloguing, discussed ways of people." Finally, it was concluded that the public was not coming to the library as fully as it should because "it wanted to play, to be amused, to be recreated; it wanted action, brisk and stirring. It wanted to gossip, debate, discuss, talk back," fully as much as it wanted to read books. Hence, the library became a social centre. Written warrant for this movement, Miss Coffin says, is as old as a statement made in the charter of the

Redwood Library of Newport, R. I., in the year 1747, and which was to the effect that the purpose of that library was "to inform the mind, to reform the practice."

The public library of St. Louis well represents this new type of work. Its work is divided into two parts, educational and recreational, and each is given a social trend. The social work of this library is best represented in its branches, because they are smaller and come into more intimate relation with the neighborhoods where they are located. "Here are held club meetings, church conferences, Christmas festivals, May parties, school graduation exercises, cadet drills, mothers' meetings, classes, and so on through all the diverse interests of the usual social centre. The branch librarian makes a series of house-tohouse visits, interesting the people in the library, and discovering by personal contact the needs and desires of her constituency." The work in St. Louis is based upon the idea, as stated by the librarian, Dr. Arthur E. Bostwick, that the public library is a public utility and that therefore Whatever the public needs it is the duty of the public library to supply."

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Other libraries of this type are endeavoring to extend their influence by having play-rooms and gymnasiums; by conducting technical schools, with classes in cookery, marketing, mechanical and electrical engineering, architecture, drawing, etc.; by conducting lecture courses; by maintaining business men's information bureaus; by providing meeting places for clubs and organizations; and, in case of the public library in Madison, Wis., by owning and operating a moving-picture "show."

But some of the most progressive, successful, and popular libraries in America do not enter largely into the social centre and general educational feature in their work. Miss Coffin cites the public library in Cleveland, O., as one of the best of this type which emphasizes the cultural side of the work rather than the social. "It issues bulletins generously and keeps in close, sympathetic touch with its patrons, but always with the frank purpose of raising the standard of reading." Its attitude, she says, is well indicated in its selection of material for the story hours given to the children each week. While other libraries are apt,

and very properly so, to select for the telling miscellaneous material from the classics, from biography, nature, science, and travel, in Cleveland the selections are made only from the classics. And they have trained story-tellers there who tell the Greek Myth Cycle, the Norse Myth Cycle, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Nibelungenlied, and the King Arthur and Robin Hood legends.

TRAVELLING LIBRARIES.-The New York Free Library is rendering excellent service to the cause of education by its system of "travelling libraries." Carefully selected books are catalogued according to school grades, and any teacher in the city schools may select a list of such books and have them delivered at the school free of charge. The teacher is encouraged to accompany the loan of books to the children with personal advice both as to wise selection and advantageous use. The books must be ready for return to the Free Library within five months.

By this plan the best books are placed within reach of all; the library is made a most effective auxiliary of the school; a wise use of proper books is developed; and a love for good literature is inculcated in the lives of the young people.

DOCTOR ELIOT'S "FIVE-FOOT SHELF OF Books."-It is difficult to determine the books to read in order to become familiar with what every man of culture should know. This difficulty is so commonly recognized that when Doctor Charles W. Eliot, the scholarly president of Harvard University for so many years, announced his intention of endeavoring to collate a limited but well-rounded library of liberal education, the announcement was everywhere welcomed, and announcements similar to that in the New York Times appeared in a number of American newspapers. "It is safe to say that the entire educational world, and a very considerable proportion of the reading public besides, will await with deep interest the selection of the volumes which go toward making what-for lack of a better namemay be termed "The President Eliot Library of Liberal Education."

The actual conception of the idea and its after-development are best summed up in Doctor Eliot's own words: "Some years ago, in a speech before an educational gather

ing, I chanced to say that a three-foot shelf would hold good books enough to give a liberal education to any one who would read them with devotion, even if he could give but fifteen minutes a day to the task. This remark brought me a considerable number of letters, demanding a list of those books. I made several efforts to make the list, but soon discovered that it was a serious undertaking, and that I had no time for it. Subsequently I saw reason to lengthen the shelf to five feet, but made very little progress toward a definite selection."

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Later on, Doctor Eliot found it necessary to discard the portions of the books selected that did not seem necessary for his purpose, in order to provide the means of obtaining such a knowledge of ancient and modern literature as seems essential to the twentieth-century idea of a cultivated man" and that he might bring the material within the size he had set for himself. He also found it advisable to arrange the material selected under subject-headings rather than by authors. These changes soon suggested the publishing of the selected material in a new form and Doctor Eliot's "Five-foot Shelf of Books" became a commercial enterprise. Aside from these republished selections from many authors, there is, therefore, now no selected list of books that would meet the conditions at first conceived by Doctor Eliot.

Music as a Factor in Education.

One of the practical advantages of the teaching of music in the schools is undoubtedly the fact that children possessing musical ability are discovered and given a start. If this were the only advantage, however, it might well be argued that the number who develop special musical ability is relatively small and scarcely sufficient to justify the expense in time, money, and effort. The general moral and æsthetic effects are, however, of much greater value, because they reach practically all and are of so much more importance. But in addition to all these values we are realizing a new one whose influence is of far-reaching importance. This is the safeguarding attraction of music, which holds the life away from degrading influences.

Commenting upon this phase of the subject, the editor of the Outlook says, in the issue of March 4, 1911: "The real answer (to the supreme value of music-teaching in the schools) lies in the fact that it is quite as important to provide amusements for people of every age and condition as it is to provide food, clothing, and shelter. If the children of the ignorant and destitute poor are not taught how to provide proper and reasonable amusements for themselves, they are likely to indulge in improper and vicious amusements. It should, therefore, be a part of all educational and charitable work to teach the children of the city how to provide for themselves sane and uplifting forms of pleasure. The development of the mental, spiritual, and imaginative side of life is of the first importance, and the results of these musical entertainments (and such musical instruction) have shown (us) how through music the children of the people may have a quick, easy, and permanently effective means to such development.'

MUSIC AS A MORAL FORCE.-George Adam Smith has well said of music: "Words are clumsy instruments for the expression of the heart, and are least efficient when they undertake to set forth moral and spiritual ideas. Music can transcend mere speech in touching the soul to fine issues, suggesting visions of things ineffable and unseen. Browning makes Abt Vogler say of the most enduring and supreme hopes that God has granted to men, ''Tis we musicians know'; but the message of music comes home with power to many who have no skill in its art." And it is well for the teacher to remember that it is not so much the ability to render good music, as it is the ability to enjoy the refining and uplifting influence of music, upon which she must rely to supplant the rude and the unworthy when she calls to her disciplinary aid this most gracious of all the arts.

AMERICAN MUSIC.-The love for good music is developing rapidly in the United States; but music as one of the greatest of the fine arts has not yet become as general in our country as it has in many of the European countries. This is not because the people of America lack in innate interest in music, but because it has generally been regarded as a mere pastime and largely as merely a graceful feminine accomplishment. But in a few of our great municipalities