Henry Augustus Homes. 



5 



his entrance upon his labors in the library in a subordinate capacity, 

 he became its presiding genius. From that day to the day when the 

 hand of death was laid upon him, a period of over thirty years, he 

 guided its policy, inspired its development and directed its energies. 

 As it stands there to-day, it is his eloquent monument. 



What rare combination of moral and intellectual qualities was re- 

 quired to develop the general library of the State from a miscellaneous 

 collection of 25,000 books into an orderly, harmonious arrangement 

 of 100,000 selected volumes, to put this great collection into the 

 foremost rank among the great libraries of the country and to main- 

 tain it there, can be but imperfectly set forth. Here, at any rate, he 

 found full scope for the exercise of the admirable conservative quali- 

 ties with which nature and all the experiences of his previous life 

 had endowed him. He entered upon his task in the library in the 

 same spirit of devotion, with the same temperate but unquenchable 

 zeal with which he had carried on the work of christianizing the 

 Orient. He was industrious beyond the industry of younger men. 

 He labored incessantly. Like the stars — and too often when they 

 were visible in their courses — he pursued his vocation "without 

 haste, without rest." He had no avocation. In fact, a study of his 

 career in the library yonder may well dissipate the impression which 

 has somehow gone abroad that a librarian is a person of great leisure; 

 that his office is the earthly realization of the otium cum dignitate 

 idea. Let that thought perish in the presence of this man of letters 

 who yet had no time to write, this laborious scholar who had not 

 the leisure to inscribe his name in the annals of scholarship, this 

 student whose time was not his own. 



Apparently he had no temptation to labor, no ambition to strive for 

 laurels, in other fields than his chosen one. He magnified his office, 

 was content with its labors and satisfied with the rewards which they 

 brought him. In fact, Dr. Homes was a born librarian. He was 

 not a learned man in the modern sense of the term; he was not 

 distinguished for profound researches in any department of human 

 knowledge; he knew no one thing so well that he could know nothing 

 else; he had not accumulated such a mass of microscopic facts that 

 the perspective of ordinary facts was destroyed. Without presuming 

 to disparage in the least that minute study of nature and man which 

 has in our time revolutionized half the sciences and is now revolu- 

 tionizing the remaining half, it will be conceded that Dr. Homes 

 gained in range of information, in breadth of view, in flexibility of 

 mind, what he lost in intensity of observation; that he was not less 



