he more I see and learn of free public libraries the more I am
convinced that a public library can reach a high degree of efficiency
in its work only when its books are accessible to all its patrons. The
free public library should not be managed for the use of the special
student, save in special cases, any more than is the free public
school. That it should be solely or chiefly or primarily the student's
library, in any proper sense of the word, is as contrary to the spirit
of the whole free public library movement as would be the making
of the public schools an institution for the creation of Greek
philologians. Everyone engaged in educational work, and especially
those thus engaged who are most thoroughly equipped for the work in
a literary way, and are most in touch with the literary and scholarly
spirit, should have his attention called again and again to the needs
of the crowd, the mass, the common people, the general run, the 90
per cent who either have never been within a schoolroom, or left it
forever by the time they were thirteen years of age. And his attention
should be again and again called to the fact that of the millions of
children who are getting an education in this country today, not over
5 or 6 per cent at the outside, and perhaps even less than that, ever
get as far, even, as the high-schools. The few, of course, rule
and must keep the lamp burning, but the many must have sufficient
education to know how to walk by it if democracy is to endure. And the
school for the many is, and is to be, if the opinions of librarians
are correct, the free public library; but it cannot be a school for
the many unless the many walk into it, and go among its books, handle
them, and so doing come to know them and to love them and to use them,
and to get wisdom from them.

CHAPTER XXXV

Advice to a librarian

[From Public Libraries, June, 1897]

As a matter of fact the position of librarian is more of an executive
business affair than a literary one. Let me give you fair warning--it
is in no sense your business to dictate to others as to what they may
or may not, should or should not, read, and if you attempt to assume
such responsibility you will make unnumbered enemies, and take upon
yourself a thankless and uncalled-for task.

Frankly, do you know what is good for me to read? Are you not very
much in doubt what is best for yourself? Isn't there a doubt in the
best and most candid minds upon this same