the expectation of certain definite returns. The
paper refers particularly to the San Francisco Public
Library, of which the author, Frederic Beecher Perkins, was
then librarian but its conclusions are general, and hold
good to-day. It was read at the Lake George Conference of
the American Library Association, in September, 1885.

Frederic Beecher Perkins was born in Hartford, Conn., Sept.
27, 1828, a grandson of Lyman Beecher. He left Yale in
sophomore year to study law and was admitted to the bar in
1851, but graduated at the State Normal School in 1852 and
devoted himself to literary and educational work. In 1880-87
he was librarian of the San Francisco Public Library. He
died in Morristown, N.J., Jan. 27, 1899. He was the father
of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

There are in the United States about 5,000 public libraries of 300
volumes or more. Returns of their present conditions are very imperfect,
and must therefore be summed in the following crude way:--

Annual cost much more than $1,500,000
The books in them are many more than 13,000,000
Books added yearly are many more than 500,000
Books used yearly are many more than 10,000,000

These institutions, therefore, represent a large money investment, and
a very extensive and active educational agency. Not all of them by any
means are "free public libraries,"--_i.e._, libraries supported by taxes
or endowments for the use of all. But a considerable portion of them
are. It may now be justly said that no town of importance is respectably
complete without a free public library any more than any town whatever
without a school.

The San Francisco Free Public Library was founded in 1879, and was
advancing with creditable speed towards a size and usefulness
corresponding to the position of San Francisco, among American cities,
until the present city government suddenly cut down its annual
appropriation to bare running expenses, leaving no allowance for buying
new books, or even for replacing old ones worn out.

This library is not a collection of mummies of deceased learning, which
will be no drier in a thousand years than they are now. It has thus far
consisted of live books for live people. But a library of this
practically useful kind, if it stops buying new books, quickly becomes
dead stock,--unattractive, obsolete, useless. In _belles-lettres_,
literature, histor