VALUE OF FREE LIBRARIES
The best proof of the value of public libraries lies in the cordial support given them by all the people, when they are managed on broad, sensible lines. Such institutions contribute to the fund of wholesome recreation that sweetens life and to the wider knowledge that broadens it. They give ambition, knowledge and inspiration to boys and girls from sordid homes, and win them from various forms of dissipation. They form a central home where citizens of all creeds and conditions find a common ground of useful endeavor.
Libraries are needed to furnish the pupils of our schools the incentive and the opportunity for wider study; to teach them "the art and science of reading for a purpose," to give to boys and girls with a hidden talent the chance to discover and develop it; to give to mechanics and artisans a chance to know what their ambitious fellows are doing; to give men and women, weary and worn from treading a narrow round, excursions in fresh and delightful fields; to give to clubs for study and recreation, material for better work, and, last but not least, to give wholesome employment to all classes for those idle hours that wreck more lives than any other cause.
F. A. HUTCHINS.
"Even now many wise men are agreed that the love of books, as mere things of sentiment, and the reading of good books, as mere habit, are incomparably better results of schooling than any of the definite knowledge which the best of teachers can store into pupils' minds. Teaching how to read is of less importance in the intelligence of a generation than the teaching what to read."