stablishing a library? He must assume the necessity of
public schools, and then argue that he may vote for a library that will
supplement the elementary instruction which the town provides. And the
justification is ample. If our schools are so conducted as to awaken a
taste for knowledge and give a correct method in English reading, the
town library may represent the university brought to every man's door.
But suppose a large portion of the funds taken from tax-payers is
devoted to circulating ephemeral works of mere amusement. Is it not as
monstrous for me to vote to tax my neighbor to furnish the boys and
girls with "A Terrible Tribulation," or "Lady So-and-So's Struggle," as
it would be for the purpose of providing them with free tickets to
witness "Article 47" or "The Black Crook"? These romances and dramas (to
represent them in the most favorable point of view) are evanescent
productions, designed to meet the market demand for the intense and
spasmodic. Their claims to patronage from the public purse are precisely
similar.

So far, the citizen has a right to object as a tax-payer. But, if he
were truly solicitous for the welfare of the community about him, the
protest might be far deeper. For the weak spot in our school system lies
just here: while claiming immense credit for giving most of our children
the ability to read, we show the profoundest indifference about what
they read. But this accomplishment of reading is a very doubtful good if
it goes no farther than to give a boy the satisfaction of perusing "The
Police Gazette," or introduces a girl to the immoralities of Mr.
Griffith Gaunt, and the adventures of a hundred other heroes of
characters even more questionable. By teaching our children to read, and
then setting them adrift in a sea of feverish literature which vitiates
the taste and enervates the character, we show an indifference about as
sensible as that of the old lady who thought it could not matter whether
her son had gone to the bosom of Abraham or Beelzebub, seeing that they
were both Scripture names.

It is not difficult to conceive of communities, existing in Greenland
or elsewhere, which might legitimately tax the citizen to furnish his
neighbors with their novel-reading. But it can scarcely be disputed that
an increased facility for obtaining works of fiction is not the pressing
need of our country in this present year of grace. Dr. Isaac Ray,
perhaps our highest authority on morbid mental