oking over the entire course of American society, from its rough and
hardy beginning, in the first years of the 17th century, I find six
distinct stages of development with reference to the possession and use
of books by the people. The first stage is that of private libraries;
the second is that of special institutional libraries, like those of
colleges and other learned corporations, and intended for a limited and
rather scholastic class in the community; the third is that of
association or joint stock libraries, _i.e._, libraries of a more
miscellaneous and general character, but for the use only of those whose
names are on the subscription list; the fourth is that of common school
libraries; the fifth is that of endowed libraries, _i.e._, public
libraries founded and sustained entirely by private endowment and thrown
open to the public without any cost whatever to the public; and finally,
the sixth is that of free public libraries created, it may be, by
private benefaction, but sustained in part at least at the public cost,
_i.e._, uniting the two elements of private help and public selfhelp,
and cherished by the public only as people will cherish that which costs
them something, and of which they have some sense of real ownership.

But before proceeding to inspect these successive forms of library
evolution, the fact should be distinctly brought out as applicable to
them all, that the American people started on their career in this
country with an uncommon interest in books; and say what one will about
American philistinism and American devotion to the practical, this
people have always retained that ancient and primitive homage for books.
To an extent, I think, unapproached elsewhere, they are, and they always
have been, a bookish people. In some other nations there is,
undoubtedly, a larger leisurely class; and among persons of that class
there is a profounder and more extensive contact with books than is the
case with us. But while among most other nations, the craving for books
is the propensity of one class, with us it may be fairly described as
the propensity of all classes. A certain tincture of bookishness has
pervaded the American people from the beginning. Perhaps the most
decided quality of American civilization has been its effort to unite
the practical with the ideal; its passion for material results ennobled
by the intellectual and the spiritual; its fine reverence for
studiousness, even amid the persi