er selves and
our posterity of centuries hence. When we think of it, it is hard to
realize that a book has not a soul.

Gerald Stanley Lee, in his latest book, a collection of essays on
millionaires, sneers at the efforts of the rich mill owners to improve
their employees by means of libraries. Life in a modern mill, he thinks,
is so mechanical as to dull all the higher faculties. "Andrew Carnegie,"
he says (and he apparently uses the name merely as that of a type), "has
been taking men's souls away and giving them paper books."

Now the mills may be soul-deadening--possibly they are, though it is hard
to benumb a soul--but I will venture to say that for every soul that Mr.
Carnegie, or anyone else, has taken away, he has created, awakened and
stimulated a thousand by contact with that almost soul--that
near-soul--that resides in books. Mr. Lee's books may be merely paper;
mine have paper and ink only for their outer garb; their inner warp and
woof is of the texture of spirit.

This is why I rejoice when a new library is opened. I thank God for its
generous donor. I clasp hands with the far-reaching municipality that
accepts and supports it. I wish good luck to the librarians who are to
care for it and give it dynamic force; I congratulate the public whose
privilege it is to use it and to profit by it.

SIMON NEWCOMB: AMERICA'S FOREMOST ASTRONOMER

Among those in all parts of the world whose good opinion is worth having,
Simon Newcomb was one of the best known of America's great men.
Astronomer, mathematician, economist, novelist, he had well-nigh boxed the
compass of human knowledge, attaining eminence such as is given to few to
reach, at more than one of its points. His fame was of the far-reaching
kind,--penetrating to remote regions, while that of some others has only
created a noisy disturbance within a narrow radius.

Best and most widely known as an astronomer, his achievements in that
science were not suited for sensational exploitation. He discovered no
apple-orchards on the moon, neither did he dispute regarding the railways
on the planet Venus. His aim was to make still more exact our knowledge of
the motions of the bodies constituting what we call the solar system, and
his labors toward this end, begun more than thirty years ago, he continued
almost until the day of his death. Conscious that his span of life was
measured by months and in the grip of what he knew to be a fatal disease,
he yet ex