507] Museum-History and Museums of History, 263 
the library it should be under the constant supervision of 
one or more men, well informed, scholarly, and withal 
practical, and fitted by tastes and training to aid in the 
educational work. I should not organize the museums 
primarily for the use of people in their larval or school- 
going stage of existence. The public school-teacher, with 
the illustrated text-books, diagrams, and other appliances, 
has in these days a professional outfit which is usually 
quite sufficient to enable him to teach his pupils. 
School-days last at the most only from four to fifteen 
years, and they end, with the majority of mankind, before 
their minds have reached the stage of growth most favora- 
ble for the reception and assimilation of the best and most 
useful thought. Why should we be crammed in the time 
of infancy and kept in a state of mental starvation during 
the period which follows, from maturity to old age — a state 
which is disheartening and unnatural all the more because 
of the intellectual tastes which have been stimulated and 
partially formed by school life? 
The museum-idea is much broader than it was fifty or 
even twenty-five years ago. ^The museum of to-day is no 
longer a chance assemblage of curiosities, but rather a 
series of objects selected with reference to their value to 
investigators, or their possibilities for public enlightenment. 
The museum of the future may be made one of the chief 
agencies of the higher civilization. \ 
I hope that the time will come when every town shall have 
both its public museum and its public library, each with a 
staff of competent men, mutually helpful, and contributing 
largely to the intellectual life of the community. 
The museum of the future in this democratic land should 
be adapted to the needs of the mechanic, the factory oper- 
ator, the day-laborer, the salesman, and the clerk, as much 
as to those of the professional man and the man of leisure. 
It is proper that there be laboratories and professional li- 
braries for the development of the experts who are to or^ 
ganize, arrange, and explain the museums. 
It is proper that laboratories be utilized to the fulL 
