nement of the
great city. There may not be a village Hampden in every village, but
there may be an Edison, a Fulton, an Eli Whitney, an Andrew Carnegie, a
Carl Schurz in any village in America. Only when we make knowledge
accessible to all shall we know what minds and hearts are among us.

But we must discriminate. The books which no longer convey knowledge,
which state theories no longer held, and propound as facts things no
longer believed; in other words, antiquated books of knowledge should be
sharply separated from books abreast of modern thinking. Those books
which have ceased to be of any use to mankind (except for antiquarian
purposes) or which never were of any use to mankind--and their name is
legion--have their place in a museum, but not in an working library. In
an arsenal we keep only weapons now serviceable in actual war, and
relegate flint-locks, catapults, and bows and arrows to the museum. No
arsenal in the world would be large enough to accommodate weapons for a
modern regiment mingled with all the weapons of all past generations. It
is time for some one to say frankly that there is no inherent sanctity
in paper and printer's ink. It may have been true in Milton's day that a
book was usually the precious life-blood of a master spirit; but to-day
a book is often the product of the least erected spirit that fell. An
almanac put forth to advertise some nostrum, or a novel prepared purely
as a piece of merchandise, does not acquire dignity or value simply
because bound in leather and placed on the shelf with "Paradise Lost."

We must apply to our libraries some higher standard than that of size.
We never estimate the Uffizzi or the Louvre by the number of paintings
they contain, yet we continue to grade modern libraries by the number of
volumes groaning on dust-covered shelves. A library of five thousand
well selected books may be of far more service than one of one hundred
thousand composed largely of books outgrown and forgotten. Our public
libraries must distinguish sharply between the library and the museum,
to the advantage of both.

Secondly: Perspective. The library aims to show us facts in their large
and permanent relations. There is no virtue in mere knowledge of facts
(any more than in vast numbers of volumes). Most facts are not worth
knowing, still less worth preserving. Doubtless the letter "p" occurs a
certain definite number of times in "Idylls of the King," and it may be
that some delude