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