ighty men.

If then there be among us any one person endued with any spark of
Shakespearian or other genius he will find it kindling to a flame
through contact in this library with similar celestial fires. To such a
"meeting soul!" as MILTON calls it,--the library will prove a better
bonanza than has been prospected in our States of silver and gold.
Though having nothing he shall possess all things,--infinite riches in a
little room.

Thus our Free Library will amuse, and instruct, and inspire. Over its
entrance I seem to read as on the front of the oldest in the world, the
inscription, "The healing of the soul," or the words of FRANKLIN to his
namesake town, "I give you books instead of a bell, sense rather than
sound." Let it have free course for a generation, calling to culture as
ceaselessly as a standing army calls to war, and this community will say
with SENECA, "Leisure without books and letters is mental death and
burial."

The first public library in Ohio--just two years younger than the
State--was founded in Ames. It was bought by hunters who threw together
a lot of raccoon skins, sent them in a sleigh by one of their number to
Boston and there bartered them for books. They soon hunted Greek as
zealously as game, and while Ames remained a hamlet ten of them, or
their children, were among the early graduates of the State University.

The influences of a library are _cumulative_, and sometimes become
manifest only after a long lapse of ages. The cuniform library of
Assyrian bricks, dating from pre-historic periods, burned up, buried and
forgotten just now emerges from its grave speaking in a voice heard
round the world, and no less authoritative than a second book of
Genesis. From its shelves more centuries look down upon us than upon
NAPOLEON at the Pyramids.

Libraries are hemmed in by no lines of State, nation, race, language,
religion or century. Their field is the world. But ours is the
cosmopolitan age, and we are pre-eminently the cosmopolitan people. More
than any other people, then must we feel the need of libraries, which
are, of all institutions, the most cosmopolitan. Hence they will benefit
us most.

Considerations like these demonstrate that free libraries tend to
_equality_ and _fraternity_. They are free lunches, crying to all: "Cut,
and come again!" As we all have equal rights at the polls and in court,
so have we in the free library. In church we each secure a blessing in
proportion to