ence and an
inference that it is a necessarily characteristic and inherent quality
of the institution in question. Were this latter true, then we might
well cry out for abolishing our churches, sidewalks, and railway
stations, for in them these very same three things respectively are
known at some time to have been done. In the last three of these counts,
however, we have only Mr. O'Brien's assertions as the basis, and we are
obliged to add also that even these are found to be conflicting. On one
page his language shows that he is pained that a certain percentage of
readers in the libraries named should prefer to call for works of
fiction. Can it be that he has forgotten this, when on another page he
cites it as a grievance that "it is a frequent occurrence for a reader
to wait for months before he can get the novel he wants"! On page 333,
after quoting, from the annual report of one of the English libraries,
the statement as to the use of works of fiction, nothing but a resort to
italics can sufficiently emphasize his lamentation that "the more
instructive books in the other classes circulate only once during the
same period." Mr. O'Brien is not the only observer who has failed always
to observe, when commenting upon percentages of fiction, that "any book
requiring serious study cannot be galloped through, like a novel, in the
week or fourteen days allowed for use," yet who would have believed that
"out of his own mouth" would he be so completely answered, for this
remark, as well as the one which it answers, is found in his decidedly
interesting chapter (p. 348). But here it is evident that the bearing of
the two upon each other was not in his mind in writing it, for his
purpose in the sentence last quoted was plainly to make it appear that
the customary regulations of public libraries were such as to render
"serious study" impossible.

The limitation of "a week or fourteen days" for a book of the kind
which he here indicates--he instances by name Kant's "Critique of pure
reason" and Smith's "Wealth of nations"--is practically unknown in
American public libraries. In most of those known to the present writer
a book of this kind can be charged in the first instance for fourteen
days and then renewed, making twenty-eight days in all, and in still
others for a longer period. It can then, after being returned to the
library--to give any other reader who may need it a chance at it--be
taken out again after remaining on the