n, though a
fool, need not err therein."

That this personal influence, when exerted, bears fruit, and that right
soon, has been proved again and again. The following is from the last
report of one of the largest libraries in the country: "The increasing
public interest in the more scholarly books of the Library, and the
large accession of visitors to the reference tables, are to be
attributed partly to the Saturday-morning classes which have been
conducted at the Library for the past four months." If such work makes
so immediate and appreciable an impression upon a circulation which is
numbered by hundreds of thousands, is there not a hopeful outlook,
indeed, for small workers?

One has said that "A library is, after all, very much what its
librarian makes it." There are too many conflicting individualities at
work in a municipal library to make this, to any considerable extent,
true; but in a small town or village the personal equation of the
librarian may easily become the exponent of the power of the library.

ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA

Dr. Talcott Williams, the orator of this occasion, Feb. 7,
1891, was at that time a journalist in Philadelphia. He has
always been a welcome writer and speaker on literary themes.

Talcott Williams was born in Abeih, Turkey, July 20, 1849,
the son of an American missionary. He graduated at Amherst
in 1873 and in that year entered journalism, becoming later
an editorial writer on several large dailies until 1912 when
he was made director of the School of Journalism of Columbia
University, New York City.

For the first and for the last time, the voices of men are heard in
this place, dedicated to the more eloquent silence of books. Nowhere is
man more and men less than in the library. In the presence of books
individual learning pales. The scholar dies; the library lives. Yet only
in part. In this bookish age, we fondly impute immortality to books.
Nothing could be more false. Few books have the power of an endless
life. Against these books of power stand a great multitude of books of
use, which perish with the using. The vast mass of books, like the
thoughts in our daily lives, sink into the background of the
recollection of the race and furnish the soil from which fresh growths
spring. Few there are who have written books of power. Not a score in
all. Poets for the most part. High pri