DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES 285 



length of shelves, the form of the accession book and the bind- 

 er's schedules, the size of cards and their ruling, to questions of 

 movable or fixed shelves, movable or fixed location, stamping 

 or embossing title pages; in fact, the things which are now 

 taught in the hbrary schools — the a, b, c of the profession. 

 This excited some ridicule, as also was natural. It was called 

 pedantic; people said that too much time was spent in dis- 

 tinguishing tweedledum from tweedlcdec; that the loss of orig- 

 inality was too high a price to pay for a doubtfully desirable 

 uniformity; that in absorption in mechanical details the things 

 of the spirit would be forgotten. They were right and they 

 were wrong. It was necessary that these questions should be 

 settled before attacking the deeper problems. One must 

 forge one's weapons before one goes into the fight. It is best 

 to be thoroughly familiar with one's tools before one under- 

 takes complicated work. Both dangers that were feared are 

 real, but against them stand American inventiveness, which 

 will not be made to halt at any one stage of achievement, and 

 the missionary spirit, which can never be content with me- 

 chanics, but must be saving souls — in the library way. The 

 leaders had no fears, and they were justified. In the last half of 

 the last quarter of the century, great as was the library prog- 

 ress in every thing else, the progress in ways of reaching the 

 public was even greater. Go into a modern library, and see 

 the steady stream of books flowing into the hands of every 

 class in the city, their time of waiting reduced to a minim lun; 

 see hung up near the delivery desk lists of the best new books, 

 made attractive by pictures and instructive by criticism; at 

 the information desk watch the versatile clerk answering a 

 constant succession of questions about the most diverse sub- 

 jects, telling one where to look, rescuing another from a fruit- 

 less search, explaining the reference books, directing to the 

 shelves, guiding the reading; see in convenient nooks the por- 

 traits of authors whose birthday is at hand, hung over tables 

 covered by their writings and the works about them, or look 

 at other tables spread with the best that the library has on 

 approaching anniversaries, Christmas, Halloween, the dis- 

 covery of America, at once showing the resources of the libra- 

 ry, and suggesting to frequenters to read for some better object 



