nformal talks on how to read in a
library. But personal suggestions, to meet particular needs, are the
most fruitful of good. And just here the school teachers, if competent
to advise, can be of the utmost service. In no way can the library be
made so valuable as by the hearty and systematic co-operation of the
librarian and the teachers. It would be very useful if they could from
time to time meet to confer upon the best methods of securing harmonious
action. For it is the generation now coming on to the stage who are
chiefly to profit by the use of this library. It is through them that
the city is to receive its chief benefit. To incite them to read, to
train them to right habits of reading, to inspire them with high ideals
of what one should seek and love in reading, should be the aspiration of
parents and teachers, if this library is to yield its largest harvest of
good.

Like all good things, this library may to some persons bring no good; it
may even be made an instrument of harm. It may bring no good, because it
may be utterly neglected. No doubt there are many families who have
never drawn a book from its shelves. It may bring no good, it may even
cause intellectual, not to say moral injury, if it is misused. It is
possible to choose from any great library such passages from works and
to peruse them in such a spirit as to gratify and stimulate prurient
desires, or if one does not descend to so unworthy and shameful an act,
one may read in such a manner as to be guilty of intellectual
dissipation. What we may call the desultory readers are exposed to this
danger. They pick up whatever book or magazine comes first to hand,
provided they are sure that it makes no tax upon their mental powers.
They spend their time dawdling over a chapter of this book, then over a
chapter of that, as men of the town now join this gay companion for an
hour and then another for the next hour for frivolous talk and
profitless gossip, and so wander aimless through the day without any
fruitage to show for their time. They lose the power, if they ever had
it, of consecutive study and thought and discourse on any theme
whatever.

I do not mean to intimate that we should never come to this library to
read for pleasure and entertainment. One of the great and proper uses of
books is to refresh and amuse us in our hours of weariness and
depression. Like the society of our choicest friends, they may wisely be
sought for the sole purpose of di