Amurath succeeds"? Do we
know as much of any authentic Danish prince as of Hamlet?

But to come back a little nearer to Chelsea and the occasion that has
called us together. The founders of New England, if sometimes, when they
found it needful, an impracticable, were always a practical people.
Their first care, no doubt, was for an adequate supply of powder, and
they encouraged the manufacture of musket bullets by enacting that they
should pass as currency at a farthing each--a coinage nearer to its
nominal value, and not heavier than some with which we are familiar.
Their second care was that "good learning should not perish from among
us," and to this end they at once established the Latin School in
Boston, and soon after the college at Cambridge. The nucleus of this
was, as you all know, the bequest in money by John Harvard. Hardly less
important, however, was the legacy of his library, a collection of good
books, inconsiderable measured by the standard of to-day, but very
considerable then as the possession of a private person. From that
little acorn what an oak has sprung, and from its acorn again what a
vocal forest, as old Howell would have called it--old Howell, whom I
love to cite, because his name gave their title to the 'Essays of Elia,'
and is borne with slight variation by one of the most delightful of
modern authors! It was, in my judgment, those two foundations, more than
anything else, which gave to New England character its bent and to
Boston that literary supremacy which, I am told, she is in danger of
losing, but which she will not lose till she and all the world lose
Holmes.

The opening of a free public library, then, is a most important event
in the history of any town. A college training is an excellent thing;
but, after all, the better part of every man's education is that which
he gives himself, and it is for this that a good library should furnish
the opportunity and the means. I have sometimes thought that our public
schools undertook to teach too much, and that the older system, which
taught merely the three R's, and taught them well, leaving natural
selection to decide who should go farther, was the better. However this
may be, all that is primarily needful in order to use a library is the
ability to read. I say primarily, for there must also be the
inclination, and, after that, some guidance in reading well. Formerly
the duty of a librarian was considered too much that of a watchdog to
ke