ake the place of disputation, or bring strife to a speedy end.

Let us hope those here seeking props for their arguments will never be
those jealous lovers of books who cannot use them without using them up,
or who spirit them away for themselves alone. Such abductors have
sometimes infested the libraries in the Capitol. Their thefts can be
justified only by that casuistry which holds stealing the relics of
saints for a pious fraud. But in truth the more holy the saint, the more
heinous the sacrilege of what Hood calls _Book_-aneering.

Moreover, every _lecture_ delivered in the city will send some
investigators to the library, that they may confute, or confirm, or
amplify its teachings. A lecture that pops will not be as surely
_popular_ as formerly, if the library shall evince that what is true in
it is not new, and that what is new is not true, or that the speaker
draws on imaginations for facts and on facts for imaginations.

Every meeting of our Women's Centennial Club will start inquiries which
cannot be answered without recourse to the library.

It is certain that books of _travel_ will here be largely consulted.
Some of us purpose to go abroad. Such will read beforehand in order to
add a precious seeing to their eyes. They would dislike to have their
experiences those of a lady who when asked what she saw in Rome answered
"dirt," or of the London barber who at the coronation of Napoleon
remembered nothing except that the Emperor was well shaved, or of the
Bostonian fresh from the West who, when called on for his opinion of
Madison, said it would be a pretty fair Massachusetts village if it were
not spoiled by so many fresh water ponds around it. Others among us have
travelled already, and we shall be studious in the library that we may
ascertain what we ought to have seen--but did not, or the meaning of
what we did see, but which was Greek to us. The Shah of Persia noted in
his journal that of all the fine things in Europe the finest to his mind
was a show of wax work. His library would teach him better, and would
not laugh at him, as we do. A Vermont friend of mine, after his trip to
London, when asked whether he saw Westminster Abbey, confessed that he
did not, but added that Westminster Abbey was out of town at the time of
his visit. If he had free course in our library he would hardly excuse
himself in that way again. Soon after crossing the Mississippi at
Burlington, I heard a New York merchant, bound for