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e does not know. All experience shows how easy it is to construct an institution out of one's own consciousness and then condemn it; we see this daily in what is written of our public school system. In General Butler's brief career as Governor of Massachusetts he made a severe attack upon the Normal Art School in Boston, and cited a pathetic instance of a fallen girl who undoubtedly (as he urged) received her first demoralization from the study of the nude in that school. It turned out on investigation that he himself had never entered the school, and that the young girl herself made no such charges; that there never had been any studying from nude models in the school; that she had attended it but a month or two, and this in its early days, when it did not possess so much as a plaster cast of a human foot or hand. No matter; the charge was reiterated up to the very end of His Excellency's career in office, and is believed by many worthy people of this day. It is equally easy to bring general charges against public libraries, and equally hard to remove their impression, however unjust and even cruel they may be. What are the facts? There has just been a great Librarians' Convention assembled from all parts of the country, and keeping together for many days. Did a single speaker at that Convention take the ground that "oftener than otherwise" the benefactors of public libraries were chilled and discouraged? On the contrary, it was reported that such benefactors were never so active, and their benefactions were never so large. The tone was not one of discouragement, but of buoyancy and hope. Every one admitted the vastness of the educational engine created by the free library system; every one had his own suggestion by way of improvement or development, but every one expressed a cordial faith in the community, and reported encouragement in all work well done. The simple truth is that the creation of a system of such libraries is like the creation of a great railway system; it must be an evolution, not a creation outright. The wisest librarian in America fifty years ago had no more conception of the free library system of to-day than had Benjamin Franklin of our postal methods; nor can any one now foresee what fifty years of development will do for either. The truth is that every step in any great organization brings out new possibilities, new dangers, and new resources. Side by side with the perils of free libraries--a
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