, was accepted by
its stockholders, by the bare majority of five votes in a poll of over
five hundred. This lack of harmony is attributable to the fact that the
bequest, so generous in itself, was hampered by the donor with numerous
conditions, deemed by many friends of the library to be highly onerous
and vexatious. Not the least among these was the following, which is
cited from the will itself:

"Let the library not keep cushioned seats for time-wasting and lounging
readers, nor places for every-day novels, mind-tainting reviews,
controversial politics, scribblings of poetry and prose, biographies of
unknown names, nor for those teachers of disjointed thinking, the daily
newspapers."

Here is one more melancholy instance of a broad and liberal bequest
narrowly bestowed. The spirit which animated the respectable testator in
attempting to exclude the larger part of modern literature from the
library which his money was to benefit may have been unexceptionable
enough. Doubtless there are evils connected with a public supply of
frivolous and trifling literature; and perhaps our periodicals may be
justly chargeable with devoting an undue proportion of their columns to
topics of merely ephemeral interest. But it should never be forgotten
that the literature of any period is and must be largely occupied with
the questions of the day. Thus, and thus only, it becomes a
representative literature, and it is precious to posterity in proportion
as it accurately reflects the spirit, the prejudices, and the
personalities of a time which has passed into history, leaving behind it
no living representatives. If we admit that the development of the human
intellect at any particular period is worth studying, then all books are,
or may become, useful. It is amazing that a person with any pretensions
to discernment should denounce newspapers as unfitted to form a part of a
public library. The best newspapers of the time are sometimes the best
books of the time. A first-class daily journal is an epitome of the
world, recording the life and the deeds of men, their laws and their
literature, their politics and religion, their social and criminal
statistics, the progress of invention and of art, the revolutions of
empires, and the latest results of science. Grant that newspapers are
prejudiced, superficial, unfair; so also are books. Grant that the
journals often give place to things scurrilous and base; but can there be
anything baser or m