Penseroso, or Saintine's Picciola, or selections from
the poems of Holmes, Whittier, Kipling, or Lowell? For all these and
similar wants, the library has an unfailing supply.

As a practical illustration of the extensive, use of books by schools in
some advanced communities, I may note that Librarian Green, of the
Worcester (Mass.) Public Library, said in 1891 that his average daily
account of the books loaned to schools in two busy winter months showed
over 1,600 volumes thus in daily use. This too, was in addition to all
that were drawn out by pupils on their own independent cards as
borrowers. Such a record speaks volumes.

In the same city, where the Massachusetts State Normal School is located,
sixty-four per cent. of the scholars visited the library to look up
subjects connected with their studies.

A forcible argument for librarians taking an interest in reading for
schools is that both parents and teachers often neglect to see that the
young get only proper books to read. The children are themselves quite
ignorant what to choose, and if left to themselves, are likely to choose
unwisely, and to read story papers or quite unimproving books. Their
parents, busied as they are, commonly give no thought to the matter, and
are quite destitute of that knowledge of the various classes of books
which it is the province of the librarian to know and to discriminate.
Teachers themselves do not possess this special knowledge, except in rare
instances, and have to become far more conversant with libraries than is
usual, in order to acquire it.

That the very young, left to themselves, will choose many bad or
worthless books is shown in the account of a principal of a school in San
Francisco, who found that sixty per cent. of the books drawn from the
public library by pupils had been dime novels, or other worthless
literature. The wide prevalence of the dime novel evil appeared in the
report of the reading of 1,000 boys in a western New York city. Out of
this number, 472 (or nearly one-half) were in the habit of devouring this
pernicious trash, procured in most cases by purchase at the news stands.
The matter was taken up by teachers, and, by wise direction and by aid of
the public library, the reading of these youthful candidates for
citizenship was led into more improving fields. To lead a mind in the
formative stage from the low to the high, from tales of wild adventure to
the best stories for the young, is by no means di