hought, needs only a slight guidance to develop an unappeasable hunger
for finding out all about things.

The ancient maxim that "it is only the first step that costs" is
especially true in the great art of education. It matters little what it
is that first awakens the intellect--the great fact is that it is
awakened, and sleeps no more thenceforward. A mottled bird's egg, found
on the way to school, excites the little finder to ascertain the name of
the bird that laid it. The school or the teacher supplies no means of
finding out, but the public library has books upon birds, with colored
plates of their eggs, and an eager search ensues, until the young student
is rewarded by finding the very bird, with its name, plumage, habits,
size, and season, all described. That child has taken an enormous step
forward on the road to knowledge, which will never be forgotten.

Instances might be multiplied indefinitely of such valuable aids to
research, afforded by libraries, all along the innumerable roads
travelled by students of every age in search of information. One of the
most profitable of school exercises is to take up successively the great
men and notable women of the past, and, by the effective and practical
aid of the libraries, to find out what is best worth knowing about
Columbus, Franklin, Walter Scott, Irving, Prescott, Bancroft, Longfellow,
Hawthorne, Whittier, Emerson, Lowell, Victor Hugo, or others too numerous
to name. Reading Longfellow's Evangeline will lead one to search out the
history and geography of Acadia, and so fix indelibly the practical facts
concerned, as well as the imagery of a fine poem. So in the notable
events of history, if a study is made of the English Commonwealth, or the
French Revolution, or the war between the United States and England in
1812-15, the library will supply the student with copious materials for
illustration.

Not alone in the fields of science, history, and biography, but in the
attractive fields of literature, also, can the libraries aid and
supplement the teachings of the school. A fine poem, or a simple,
humorous, or pathetic story, told with artless grace or notable literary
skill, when read aloud by a teacher in school, awakens a desire in many
to have the same book at home to read, re-read, and perhaps commit to
memory the finer passages. What more inspiring or pleasing reading than
some of Longfellow's poems, or the Vicar of Wakefield, or Milton's
L'Allegro and Il