of books. This utility is
none the less precious because it is intangible. Indeed, it is the
unique privilege of the library among municipal enterprises that it can
provide a service which aids the higher life of the citizen so directly
and so purely. In the spirituality of this function, the library stands
second only to the highest institutions of pure learning, and to the
church.

No new undertaking, no extension of work, no plea of necessity can
warrant or justify any loss of power on this highest level. The problem
is not to discover how to sacrifice as little as possible of the old
spirit to the new duties, but to learn how through the new duties we may
make more wide-spread and more potent for good that oldest and best
inheritance from the past--the love of books.

"The people's university," the library has been called, but it would be
as great a pity if the librarian so understood this term as to believe
that people came to the library only to learn, as it would be if any
went there who could not learn what they sought. That university which
is a place to study rather than a place to live is missing its best
possibilities, and in a similar way the library ought to be, first and
always, a place to read rather than a place to study. I would not go so
far as to say that I want to find it a place to "loaf," though I might
be provoked into saying so; but certainly it must be a place where I can
"invite my soul"--such a place as the world gives me elsewhere only in
the church or in the silence of nature. Trade journals and technical
works are of great use; books for women's clubs are good things; the
children's room is a necessity; but these of themselves no more make a
library than a kitchen, dining room and bedroom make a home. Out of such
utilities as these you may get a boarding house, but nothing better; the
family makes it a home. Those are wholly wrong who believe that standard
books are so cheap that anyone can buy them, and therefore the library
could conceivably get on without them. Without the best literature you
might get a very useful institution, no doubt, but not a library, for in
a library the great works of the great authors are the soul and theirs
is the spirit which enables the library not merely to contribute to the
advance of the community toward prosperity and intelligence, but also,
in some degree, to touch its higher life to finer issues.

THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

AN ADDRESS AT ITS