e from the "five loaves and fishes" still lives in the hearts of
men to animate them to good works, as shown by Messrs. Ames, Hail,
Pratt, Carnegie, Osterhout, Newberry, and a host of others whose names
are yet to be engraved as public benefactors on the tablets of public
libraries.

May God speed the work!

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS OF JOSEPH N. LARNED

The need of stronger forces in popular education--the
failure of the press--the library's opportunity, as it
appeared to a scholarly librarian of the so-called "old
school" in 1894.

Joseph Nelson Larned was born in Chatham, Ontario, May 11,
1836, and was educated in the public schools of Buffalo,
N.Y. He served on the editorial staff of the Buffalo
_Express_ in 1859-72, was superintendent of education in
Buffalo in 1872-73 and superintendent of the Buffalo Library
from 1877 until it became the Public Library in 1897, after
which he devoted himself to literature until his death in
1913. His best known work is his History for Ready Reference
and Topical Reading. He was president of the A.L.A. in
1893-94.

It was my misfortune to be absent from the meeting at which you did me
the honor to elect me to this place, and I had no opportunity, either to
give my advice against that action, or to thank you for the distinction
with which it clothes me. The advice I would have given is now belated;
but my thanks have lost no warmth by the delay, and I pray you to accept
them with belief in their sincerity. At the same time I shall venture to
draw from the circumstances a certain claim upon your generosity. If it
happens to me to be tripped in some of these tangles of procedure which,
in such meetings as this, await the stumbling feet of an untrained
presiding officer, be good enough to remember the warning I would have
given you if I had had the opportunity.

We are gathered for the sixteenth meeting of the American Library
Association, in the eighteenth year of its existence. Our league of the
libraries is young; its history is unpretentious; but it is the history
of a movement of higher importance to the world that many others that
have marched with trumpets, and drums. Eighteen years ago, the
conception of the Library militant, of the Library as a moving force in
the world, of the Librarian as a missionary of literature, was one which
a few men only had grasped; but with which those few had already begun
the doi