who believe in the best associations, literary as well
as social. And associations may have their effect even if they are
apparently trivial or superficial.

When the open-shelf library was first introduced we were told that one of
its chief advantages was that it encouraged "browsing"--the somewhat
aimless rambling about and dipping here and there into a book. Obviously
this can not be done in a closed-shelf library. But of late it has been
suggested, in one quarter or another, that although this may be a pleasant
occupation to some, or even to most, it is not a profitable one. Opponents
of the open shelf of whom there are still one or two, here and there, find
in this conclusion a reason for negativing the argument in its favor,
while those of its advocates who accept this view see in it only a reason
for basing that argument wholly on other grounds.

Now those of us who like a thing do not relish being told that it is not
good for us. We feel that pleasure was intended as an outward sign of
benefits received and although it may in abnormal conditions deceive us,
we are right in demanding proof before distrusting its indications. When
the cow absorbs physical nutriment by browsing, she does so without
further reason than that she likes it. Does the absorber of mental pabulum
from books argue wrongly from similar premises?

Many things are hastily and wrongly condemned because they do not achieve
certain results that they were not intended to achieve. And in particular,
when a thing exists in several degrees or grades, some one of those grades
is often censured, although good in itself, because it is not a grade or
two higher. Obviously everything depends on what is required. When a
shopper wants just three yards of cloth, she would be foolish to buy four.
She would, of course, be even more foolish to imagine that, if she really
wished four, three would do just as well. But if a man wants to go to the
eighth story of a building, he should not be condemned because he does not
mount to the ninth; if he wishes a light lunch, he should not be found
fault with for not ordering a seven-course dinner. And yet we continually
hear persons accused of "superficiality" who purposely and knowingly
acquire some slight degree of knowledge of a subject instead of a higher
degree. And others are condemned, we will say, for reading for amusement
when they might have read for serious information, without inquiring
whether amusement, in