ognize the true function of the free
public library; it is a part of a large system of public education. It
is but a co-ordinate department of that larger institution for public
education--the people's university--including the ward schools and the
high schools. Some of the fruitfullest and best work of those schools
will be done in this library.

Then, too, the public library stands for the wholesome truth that
education is never finished and should not stop when one stops going to
school. The boy and the girl who graduate at the school do not desert
the library; they keep up and carry forward their intellectual training
by a post-graduate course in the public library, for the rest of their
lives.

Furthermore, the free public library supplements the work of the free
public schools by reaching those whom the schools never reached at all,
or only reached very slightly.

And that public library is never a complete success, in which is not
present in the officers a spirit of courtesy toward readers, of
sympathy, of cheerfulness, of patience, even of helpfulness. Don't
permit your library ever to be a dismal, bibliographical cave, in charge
of a dragon. Let it always be a bright and winsome place, hospitable to
all orderly people; a place where even those ill-informed about books
will not be made embarrassed, but encouraged. Let it be one of the most
attractive places in town; let it outshine in attractiveness the vulgar
and harmful attractions of the bar-room and the gambling den; let it
grow up into the best life of the community, a place resorted to by all,
loved by all, a blessing to all.

THE LIBRARY AS A FIELD FOR PHILANTHROPY

At a dinner given to Andrew Carnegie by the Authors' League
in New York, he said: "They say I am a philanthropist. I am
no such foolish fellow." Nevertheless, to the _North
American Review_ for December, 1889, he contributed an
article, entitled "The Best Fields for Philanthropy," in
which he gives the Library first place. It is of course
impossible to tell whether the title was his or a suggestion
of the editor. The extract printed here is interesting as
embodying Mr. Carnegie's gospel of "help by self-help," but
also as giving credit to Enoch Pratt of Baltimore as an
earlier exponent of it.

Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, Nov. 25,
1835. He was brought by his family to Pittsburgh, Pa. as a
boy of 13,