er of loftier altitudes--into the grandeurs
of life! Emerson and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Whitman--do men love
such as these and remain little men? No, this is the meat from which
giants are grown; here is the food for souls. Now it seems to me it is
the duty of the good librarian, one who believes in the august nature of
his profession, to lead up his readers by all devices within his power,
by imperceptible gradations, through the books that please and the books
that inform, to the books that inspire. And the librarian who drops a
boy before he learns to love John Milton has only brought him half his
journey, and has dropped him before he has reached the destination to
which his fare was paid.

Why do not people read the best books? One reason is they never see
them. It is a librarian's business to keep them in sight, his next
business is to read them himself, and his next business is to talk about
them whenever he can get an audience of fifty, or five, or one; to write
about them in his monthly bulletins and let every man know he can get
them, and welcome, by stretching out his hand. We all know how Tom
Sawyer got his fence painted. He made all the boys in his neighborhood
believe that fence painting was great fun. The librarian should make all
the boys in his neighborhood believe that reading the best books is
genuine pleasure. They can be brought to an appreciation of this
pleasure as one is brought to the height of a tableland of a great
continent, by gradations so gradual that they seem to be walking on a
flat surface.

I believe that the great destiny of the public library is as yet but
faintly foreseen. The plain truth is that the library has not tried yet
to do its best. It has opened it doors and let people come in, if they
so desire, or if they happen to be passing that way. No successful
auctioneer does business according to any such method. On the contrary
he lifts up his voice to all it may concern, and to all that do not care
that there are about to be great bargains at his place. The business man
who opens his store and then forever holds his peace has his solitude
very infrequently interrupted by customers. The church that has no
missionary spirit is as tepid as the old church of Laodicea. The
schoolmaster whose pupils absent themselves too frequently collects his
daily audience, even if he has to call in the services of the truant
officer. All this is written with something of the same wisdom.