important than getting in. The library is no longer merely a
passive receptacle, but becomes an aggressive educational force in every
community. The reservoir will not become a stagnant pool, for, in its
branches and deliveries, the public library has mains and pipes laid
through every street, and reaching almost to the door of every
householder. And we live now not in the age of the reservoir, but in the
age of the fountain. In our zeal and admiration, however, we are apt to
forget that there is yet another and even more important stage to reach.
In my own city, some time ago, we spent half a million dollars in
providing an ample supply of water. But we found that we had really
opened convenient communication with the cemetery by water, for the
quality of the new and abundant beverage was such that our death-rate
steadily rose. The burning question became qualitative, not
quantitative, and we are now spending our money on efficient filtration.
Of course no library intends to circulate injurious books, but equally
no town intends to distribute harmful water. We are concerned more with
the results than with the intention. The mortality tables make plain the
physical defect, but alas! science has as yet devised no instruments
delicate enough to record the greater danger to the individual and the
State from poison in the great current, which has come to be a mighty
flood, of modern reading matter. The most hopeful, and perhaps the only
practicable, method of guarding against this serious danger is through
the public library, which must now in the last days of this eventful
century recognise the gravity of the new responsibility which it cannot
shirk. Before another audience I might dwell at length on what this
problem of selection means, but the representative librarians of the
world will understand my claim that, wonderful as was the development
from the cistern to the fountain, its importance is overshadowed by this
great question of excluding the pernicious, which I sum up in the word
filtration. This is the great problem of the modern library, and its
solution must depend largely on the State.

It is often said that the modern periodicals and newspapers are our
greatest danger; but this, of course, is true only of the sensational
and other objectionable types. I yield to none in my high appreciation
of what the best kind of newspaper may do in its capacity as the
strongest ally of the public library and of the public s