s.

The lesson in art is good in literature also. Give the common people good
models, and there is no danger but they will appreciate and understand
them. Never stoop to pander to a depraved taste, no matter what specious
pleas you may hear for tolerating the low in order to lead to the high,
or for making your library contribute to the survival of the unfittest.

Is it asked, how can the librarian find out, among the world of novels
from which he is to select, what is pure and what is not, what is
wholesome and what unhealthy, what is improving and what is trash? The
answer is--there are some lists which will be most useful in this
discrimination, while there is no list which is infallible. Mr. F.
Leypoldt's little catalogue of "Books for all Time" has nothing that any
library need do without. Another compendious list is published by the
American Library Association. And the more extensive catalogue prepared
for the World's Fair in 1893, and embracing about 5,000 volumes, entitled
"Catalogue of A. L. A. Library: 5,000 vols. for a popular library," while
it has many mistakes and omissions, is a tolerably safe guide in making
up a popular library. I may note that the list of novels in this large
catalogue put forth by the American Library Association has the names of
five only out of the twenty-eight writers of fiction heretofore
pronounced objectionable, and names a select few only of the books of
these five.

As for the later issues of the press, and especially the new novels, let
him skim them for himself, unless in cases where trustworthy critical
judgments are found in journals. Running through a book to test its style
and moral drift is no difficult task for the practiced eye.

Let us suppose that you are cursorily perusing a novel which has made a
great sensation, and you come upon the following sentence: "Eighteen
millions of years would level all in one huge, common, shapeless ruin.
Perish the microcosm in the limitless macrocosm! and sink this feeble
earthly segregate in the boundless rushing choral aggregation!" This is
in Augusta J. Evans Wilson's story "Macaria", and many equally
extraordinary examples of "prose run mad" are found in the novels of this
once noted writer. What kind of a model is that to form the style of the
youthful neophyte, to whom one book is as good as another, since it was
found on the shelves of the public library?

I am not insisting that all books admitted should be models of sty