STUDIES ON MUSEUMS AND KINDRED INSTITUTIONS. 491 



directors, who serve for three years, the appointments being confirmed 

 by the city council. The board of directors reorganizes itself yearly, 

 chooses its president and vice-president and appoints six committees: 

 On the library, administration, delivery stations, buildings and 

 grounds, finance, and by-laws; the secretary of the library acts as 

 secretary to the board. Unstinted praise is due these men, who, with 

 the active stafl' of the public librar} ,, devote their energies to so great 

 a task and solve it in so successful a manner. I am sorry that I am no 

 longer 3^oung enough to assist in establishing a similar institution in 

 Germany. In the public library of Chicago one learns how much we 

 have to do in this field. Our schools may be better than those of 

 America; of that, however, I am not in a position to judge; but the 

 means which we furnish adults, by which the}^ can, without expense 

 and without difficult conditions, further educate themselves, are 

 entirely insufiicient. We need an intellectual counterpoise for the 

 purpose of freeing men from pot-house living and women from back- 

 stairs literature, and for this a free public library of the best type is a 

 powerful lever. 



In my account of the Chicago Public Library I have only been able 

 to touch upon the principal matters, being obliged to omit many 

 interesting and instructive details. 



. 16. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 



[Founded by John D. Rockefeller.] 



The University of Chicago was opened in 1892. It possesses a rec- 

 tangular piece of ground about 35 acres in extent, 2,075 feet long, 875 

 feet wide, covering six city blocks " in the southern part of Chicago, 

 between Jackson and Washington parks, distant two-thirds of a mile 

 from the former and one-fourth of a mile from the latter, on the Mid- 

 way Plaisance, a strip of park that unites the two. The original plans 

 contemplated the establishment of a great museum, but as the Field 

 Columbian Museum arose in the near vicinit}^ that idea was abandoned 

 and, instead of forming a great collection for public exhibition, it con- 

 fines itself more to scientific collections for teaching purposes. Those 

 at present provided, independent of the collections of the separate 

 institutions, are displayed in two museums, the Walker Museum and 

 the Haskell Oriental ^luseum. Both were designed, as were all the 

 buildings of the university,'' by Henry Ives Cobb, the architect of the 



« Now much more, 1903. 



& I could not give all the study to these that they deserved, and have, in the fol- 

 lowing remarks, consulted the annual registers of the university and the annual 

 reports of the president, as well as an article by Prof. F. Starr, in AppIcUm's Popu- 

 lar Science Monthly, October, 1897, pp. 784-805; also taking from the latter some 

 illustrations. During my visit to the university, as I was endeavoring to obtain 

 some information at the oftice, a student heard me, constituted himself as my guide 

 and accompanied me everywhere during the whole day. This shows the uncom- 



