of books, and the townsfolk were in the habit of taking these without having to pay for the privilege. An idea thus became firmly established, that reading matter is a thing to be had for the asking, and with very little sense of favor in the asking. This notion has persisted among the native stock, and spread widely in the virgin soil of foreign extraction.

After parish and town ceased to be synonymous, the subscription libraries were organized. These served their communities as long, and only so long, as the habitual patrons belonged to the same financial stratum. Those that survived the economic reconstruction of the early nineteenth century tended after a while to become local book clubs, whose permanence is assured by the fact that membership in them is a sign of social distinction.

The commercial, pay-as-you-take, "Circulating" libraries came into vogue after the subscription societies began to be regarded as somewhat exclusive organizations. These contributed largely to the spread of information during the decades when culture was first generally recognized as a desirable thing in this country and they are still making a brave effort to supply cheap reading for those who cannot afford to buy new books and who prefer to pay in order to get what they want. For some reason or other, however, these strictly business purveyors of literature have not been successful in meeting the increasingly widespread demand for a steady supply of readable books.

About forty years ago the craving created by this demand called for some substantial alleviation. The natural way to satisfy it was suggested by the free institutions which had been founded in a few of the older towns by farsighted benefactors. These were serving admirably the requirements of a small and studiously minded constituency that frequented them. During the later decades of the last century their attendants began to report a steadily increasing number of unfamiliar faces, and the habitual occupants of established places in accustomed corners complained of intruders. At about the same time, less favored communities learned that a library was one of the principal tests of civic respectability which were being applied by young people when looking for a place in which to set up a home.

What would have happened if a number of differing communities had been permitted to work out each in its own way a means of meeting this situation would be as interesting as fruitless a speculation. Instead of this, the Public Library Movement was started. Out of an inchoate sense of general desire was created a movement of extraordinary power. A natural evolution was transformed into an epidemic.

Through the public spirited activities of a small group of energetic, imaginative men and women, practically every self-respecting municipality in this

country has come into the possession of a free reading room and circulating library. Not content with this achievement, the same keen foresight and devotedness to the cause developed a new profession. The prime-movers perceived that it was as necessary to provide workers as it was places where there was work to be done. They started schools in order that there might be a supply to meet the demand for persons who would know how to handle the mysterious details which are the machinery of this institution. Besides the details, they inculcated certain ideals of service and of duty to the community which have given to library workers as a class their most distinguishing characteristics. These came to be the accepted tenets of the fraternity, and they made of it a profession.

The library movement ran its course within the span of a single generation. Those who created it have only recently given up the active leadership of what is, in a double sense, their profession. Its present apostles are those who were trained in the early days of enthusiastic achievement, when a daily record could be kept for new foundations, when experiments were reported and theories devised at each annual conference. To their successors is now being entrusted the not less important if more humdrum task of administering the results of these achievements and experiments, without the inspiration of novelty or the fillip of sceptical criticism. The position of the library is secure, but its permanent relation to the scheme of community life is still to be worked out.

The profession has won recognition, but it has also lost the incentive which invigorated its recent, youthful past. Librarianship is in need of a tonic. It wants something which shall put more alertness into the every-day routine, the weekly grind at detail, something which shall make it easier to hold attention to tasks which inevitably tend to cultivate desultory habits.

It may be that this tonic will be found in an increasing familiarity with books. Mere acquaintance with their more or less readable, or informing, contents will not serve the purpose. The contents furnish too large a part of the matter for casual conversation with library patrons ever to be very exhilarating to those to whom this is a part of the day's occupation. Knowledge of the backs of books, the physical characteristics by which they are judged as instinctively as are the features of a strange person, will not accomplish the desired end. Familiarity implies something different. It must be based upon qualities like those which make one fond of human friends, for their own peculiar individual selves.

The opportunity to become familiar with the personality of individual books is coming as a by-product in the stage of the evolutionary process

through which the libraries are now passing, that of the specialization of departments. This has already reached a point where the institution that is too small to have any subdivisions is itself regarded as belonging to a special class, requiring for its administrator peculiar aptitude and training. At the other extreme are the departments which set themselves up as independent organizations, like the libraries of the Hispanic and the Engineering Societies, of the Rockefeller and the Sage Foundations, of many private corporations and a few individuals. Between these are the public libraries, with their long accustomed children's room and the newest fad in Business Branches, whose nominal connection with the parent institution is maintained by a plenary dispensation as to all rules, regulations and printed forms. For each of these the attendant is expected to have a training as well as temperament adapted to the particular department. In this limitation to a special field lies the chance to distinguish among books and select those with which to become more intimately familiar.

Books, an article of commerce manufactured for sale, are for the most part merely the libraries' circulating medium. They are written and printed normally in order that they may be used. The more nearly they are used up, the better do they fulfill the purpose for which they exist. Those that survive, that cumber the shelves after readers have ceased to ask for them, rather than the volumes that are discarded because they are unfit to be given out again, are the real waste assets of a public library.

Besides the books that get used up and those that escape this fate because there are not enough people who want to look at them, there is another kind which have only a superficial resemblance to account for their association with the others. These are the volumes that should be preserved carefully, by any library that is fortunate enough to possess them. They ought not to be loaned or allowed to be read, except under special restrictions, and by those who appreciate their worth. These are the choice books, which are precious for some sentimental or curious reason. It occasionally happens that they also possess an intrinsic interest for readers or that ordinary students find useful information on their pages, but not often, and never is interest or information sufficient to justify unappreciative use. Ordinarily these books are merely curiosities. They are apt to be scarce and hard to come by, but not always. They are what is known in the trade as "collectors' books," which appear at irregular intervals in the second-hand booksellers' catalogues and in the auction rooms. They are the volumes which are sought for because they possess individuality, some sentimental association or unusual peculiarity, which gives them an artificial, but not on that account unreal or undeserved,

value. They are the books with which acquaintanceship almost always leads to fondness.

Choice and precious books are not at all uncommon. I do not recollect ever having looked along the shelves of any library, small or large, without noticing some volume that deserved a better treatment than it was getting, or for which there was not a good claim for a place in the library's treasury. Askew in the corner of a Chicago stack was once the only copy as yet known of a drama written in America long before the English colonists settled here. A copy of the first English Prayer Book whose pages embodied much of the history of Bloody Mary's reign came from the mouldy basement of a New England University. In one of the most comfortable of little libraries the first editions of Kate Greenaway's early books, received with the rest of an elderly patron's lifetime accumulations, were found unharmed in the children's corner. I feel sure that this particular more particular now - institution will get other and more valuable gifts, that each member of the staff will look at the books as they pass through her hands with a livelier interest, and that more children will enjoy looking at these spotless pages in their still fresh covers, because they are now treasured as precious possessions in a closed case, from which they are taken as a special favor or when some visitor is deemed worthy of honor.

The room in which such books are kept in the largest libraries, - Treasure Room or Reference Department, or best of all, the librarian's personal office is recognized as an important and thoroughly useful feature of the institution. There is no reason why it should not be just as valuable, and probably it would be more helpful to staff and public alike, in the Branches and village libraries. The John Crerar Library is the only place where specimens of early Chinese printing are to be seen. These would interest fewer people at the Harlem Branch than the first thing printed at that river settlement, which might be as hard to find and actually as rare as the ancient Chinese work. The local thing will inevitably attract more visitors and have a greater value than any exotic, whenever the same care is taken to make it known. Shakespeare Quartos awaken the imagination of those who do not know about them less than any volume that was once the property of a local celebrity or an old woodcut of a town landmark.

Collecting books is not as proper a function for library workers as circulating or cataloguing them, but most people find it much more entertaining. It is a thing that each can do, for herself or for the institution, and there is nothing more likely to add to the fun of work that is all too apt to become routine. The newspaper reports give the impression that this is an expensive

sport, but in reality it is still what it has long been one of the leading poor man's pastimes. All that one needs to do is to pick a subject according to purse as well as inclination, and learn to bide one's time.

Chaucerian manuscripts and Windmill Psalters come high, and are worth all they cost in money, patience, and courage when the opportunity comes. Gutenberg Bibles, Columbus Letters and Shakespeare Folios are comparatively common books, but none the less luxuries, as are Stevenson first editions and the correct Pickwick in parts. There are scores of other writers, however, whose books are just about as well worth knowing intimately, and whose first or desirable editions may be secured for little more than the cost of patient searching. There are no end of subjects and localities about which enough has been written to make the quest exciting, most of which can be had for what the buyer will pay. One of these that crossed my path recently concerned one-legged men, and the collector told me many things that I am glad to know about the survivals of popular ballad literature. The game, like every game that is worth playing, has its element of danger for those who lack the power to resist temptation; but the start is easy, the rules are simple, and the lists are open the year around.

Two friends of mine collect children's books. One spends dimes to the other's dollars. Each gets his money's worth, in possessions and in fun. Bargains fall to one as often as to the other. Few strangers would find in either collection much amusement for an idle hour, but under the guidance of either owner, both are brimming with romance and legend and tales of hair-breadth escapes and captures. Another, whom all bookish folk revere, is buying any old thing that has a name which he does not recollect at the foot of the titlepage. Thereby he is reconstructing the careers of a hundred worthy printers whose deeds deserve a record. A younger man is finding the search for the publications in which Robert W. Service's early poems appeared as tantalizing as it is difficult. Another is hunting for eighteenth century editions of the English classics because he cannot afford the twentieth century ones that he thought he wanted before he discovered the charm of old leather. One library, envious of a lucky rival, began buying political tracts of the period where it found that it could get the largest number for the smallest amount of money, and already it has what is probably an unapproachable collection of material for students of a not unimportant episode. Books are still the cheapest desirable thing in the world. All that is necessary in order to enjoy the possession of them is a little wall space, a restrained taste, and knowledge of what one wants.