the free libraries on an average
thirteen times a year, of whom three fourths came to read in the
reading-rooms. Such a refuge from the perils of the saloon and the
street is an immense benefaction in any neighborhood.

The relative cheapness of securing this means of general culture and
enjoyment, this efficient antidote to vice and ignorance, is strikingly
shown by comparing its cost with other items of governmental
expenditure, and the statistics of national luxuries and vices. The
eighty-six free libraries in the large cities of Great Britain cost not
more than half a million dollars per year--one fifth the cost of a first
class ironclad. The statistics I have given show that the cost of the
two war vessels just voted by Congress might be abundantly sufficient to
insure the organization on the Massachusetts plan of a free library in
every village and country town of the United States, not now accessible
to such a library. The expenditure for drink, for horse-racing, or even
for tobacco, for a single year, would royally equip and endow a public
library for every thousand people now without such privileges. As
post-office savings banks are, wherever established, a mighty engine for
teaching thrift, as public parks are an incalculable source of health
and enjoyment in our cities, so the public library, "the free literary
park," as Jevons calls it, is a most effective agency for the promotion
of culture and civilization.

In the year 1851, George Ticknor, the distinguished author of the
"History of Spanish Literature" and a benefactor of the Boston Public
Library, wrote to Edward Everett: "I would establish a library which
differs from all free libraries yet attempted; I mean one in which any
popular books tending to moral and intellectual improvement shall be
furnished in such numbers that many persons can be reading the same book
at the same time; in short, that not only the best books of all sorts,
but the pleasant literature of the day, shall be made accessible to the
whole people when they most care for it--that is, when it is fresh and
new. I would thus by following the popular taste--unless it should
demand something injurious--create a real appetite for healthy reading.
This appetite once formed will take care of itself. It will in a great
majority of cases demand better and better books."

Mr. Everett's conservatism doubted the wisdom of these principles for
the foundation of a library: but they are essentia