is a
fatherly attitude taking the place of old punitive ideas.

=Culture Aids to the Common Life.=--When we come to the new work of
making the streets safer for the spirit of youth, and the life of all
more protected and happy by recreative measures standardized for
personal uplift, we are distinctly in the area of parental functions
of the modern state. It takes fatherly men and motherly women to run
the public playground, and to make the parks, the museums, the
settlement clubs and classes, and the children's rooms in public
libraries what we now will that they shall be,--the centres of eager
interest and the nursery of character development. The mention of the
free public library suggests what is probably the most potent of all
the higher social influences in our American life. In the large city
and in the small town alike, and even in remote rural districts served
by the Loan Libraries, the opportunity to find what will feed the mind
and lead toward the delight of the printed page is one that has meant
more to more people who were aspiring and able to become leaders in
any sphere of life than has any other opportunity; perhaps than even
the public school after the main essentials of early grade teaching
have been gained.

To sit in a public library and watch the eager interest of each
newcomer, to see the patience, the understanding, the sympathetic
attitude and the earnest effort to be of utmost service which the
librarian almost invariably shows, and to see the absorbed attention
of the readers in what they have been assisted in selecting, is to
bless the generosity and public spirit of every one who has made the
public library so common a blessing. Not all books are equally
helpful, not all give equal pleasure, it is true, but when one gets a
book with a message in it for him, what a joy!

One often thinks of the lovely song of Emily Dickinson when sitting
thus in a public library:

"He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor
Or that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy ways
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!"

=Many Languages in One Country.=--In this connection must be noted the
effort of many to limit this "bequest" to the language of the country.
In another connection we have noted the difficulty that inheres in
having many differing tongues in one community, the