intoxicating drams.

And, so far as I can perceive, this action and reaction between what is
ignorant and vulgar in the public and what is mercenary and unscrupulous
in the press will go on until popular education from other sources puts
an end to it. For it is the saving fact that there are other sources;
and foremost among them are the public libraries. If it has been our
privilege to see, and for some in our circle to bear a part in, the
beginnings of the active educational work of the libraries, I am
persuaded that it is only the beginnings we have witnessed as yet. I am
persuaded that the public library of the future will transcend our
dreams in its penetrating influence. Consider for a moment what it is,
and what it offers to the energies of education which a desperate
necessity is awakening and organizing in the world! It is a store, a
reservoir, of the new knowledge of the latest day and the ripened wisdom
of the long past. To carry into the memory and into the thought of all
the people who surround it, in a town, even some little part of what it
holds of instructed reasoning and instructed feeling, would be to
civilize that community beyond the highest experience of civilization
that mankind has yet attained to. There is nothing that stands equally
beside it as a possible agent of common culture. It is the one fountain
of intellectual life which cannot be exhausted; which need not be
channeled for any fortunate few; which can be generously led to the
filling of every cup, of every capacity, for old or young. There is
little in it to tempt the befouling hand of the politician, and it
offers no gain to the mercantile adventurer. For those who serve it on
behalf of the public there are few allurments of money or fame. Its vast
powers for good are so little exposed to seduction or corruption that it
seems to give promises for the future which are safer and surer than any
others that society can build hopes upon.

In this view, those who serve the public libraries have a great
responsibility laid on them. They hold in their hands what would give to
civilization an ideal refinement if it could be distributed and
communicated to all. As we know very well, that is impossible. There is
a part of mankind, in every community, which never will feel, never can
be made to feel, the gentle attractiveness and influence of books. The
fact is one not to be disputed or ignored. At the same time it is a fact
to be treated practic