ame story might prove harmless to one boy and give
a moral twist to another's mind from which he might never recover. One
girl might receive from a book a hundred evil suggestions, hopelessly
depraving her imagination, while upon another it might not leave a
single evil trace. Now, it is not possible for the most scrupulous
librarian to discriminate between these two, and refuse the book to the
one and freely give it to the other. And therefore no library with a
large and miscellaneous collection of stories and novels can be safe for
children freely to use except under the careful supervision of their
parents. The only safeguard of which I know is for parents to read much
with their children, to interest themselves in their books, and to talk
with them about them. Those stories, for instance, against which there
has been such an outcry of late years, would have but small power to
hurt that boy to whom a father had taken the pains to point out the
absurdities, the unrealities, the false ideas and aims of which they are
accused.

But in our cities and large towns there can be no doubt that the
greater number of the younger readers of a public library belong to the
second of the two classes referred to--those who have none to guide them
in the choice of their books. The most of these come, of course, simply
for amusement, without a thought of any better use of the library. But a
few come with other and higher aims. Some, with no specially strong
tastes or more than ordinary capacities, merely wish to read that which
will cultivate their minds and increase their knowledge, or will be
profitable to them in their work. A very few there are, however, in
every large town, with intellects of no mean order and strong ambitions,
who turn to the library instinctively for that which will satisfy the
cravings of their intellects and the promptings of their ambitions. A
youth with the instincts of a Lincoln or a Webster comes to read the
history of his country. Another, with the latent powers of a Nasmyth, a
Stevenson, or an Arkwright, wants the books which will give full play to
his inventive faculties. Another finds a strange and irresistible
attraction in natural phenomena, in the habits of plants and animals, in
the formation of the rocks and the hills, in the aspects of the skies
and the movements of the stars. Now, it will depend very much upon the
first choice of their books, and the subsequent direction of their
reading, wheth