Another reader is anxious to see a picture of "St. George and the Dragon." If you have the "Museum of Painting and Sculpture," in 17 volumes, or Champlin's "Cyclopaedia of Painters and Painting," a dictionary of art in four volumes, you find it in either work, in the alphabet, under "St. George," and his want is satisfied.
A youngster wants to know how to build a boat, and you find him Folkard on Boats, or Frazar's Sail-boats, which describe and figure various styles of water-craft.
Perhaps an inquisitive reader wants to find out all about the families of the various languages, and what is known of their origin, and you supply him with W. D. Whitney's "Life and Growth of Language," or Max Müller's "Science of Language," either of which furnishes full information.
Another inquirer seeks for information about the aggregate debts of nations. You give him the great quarto volume of the last Census on Wealth and Indebtedness, or for still later information the Statesman's Year Book for 1899, or the Almanach de Gotha for the current year, both of which contain the comparative debts of nations at the latest dates.
The inquirer who seeks to know the rates of wages paid for all kinds of labor in a series of several years, can be supplied with the elaborate Report on Labor and Wages for fifty-two years, published by the U. S. Government in 1893, in four volumes.
Another reader wishes, we will suppose, to hunt up the drawings of all patents that have been issued on type-writers, and type-writing inventions. You put before him the many indexes to the Patent Specifications and Patent Office Gazette; he makes out from these his list of volumes wanted, which are at once supplied, and he falls to work on his long, but to him interesting job.
A reader who has seen in the library or elsewhere a book he would much like to own, but cannot find a copy in town, wants to know what it will cost: you turn to your American or foreign catalogue, covering the year of publication, and give him not only the price, but the publisher's name from whom he can order it, and he goes on his way rejoicing.
An artist engaged upon a painting in which he wishes to introduce a deer, or a group of rabbits, or an American eagle, or a peacock, asks for an accurate picture of the bird or animal wanted. You put before him J. S. Kingsley's Riverside Natural History, in six volumes, and his desire is satisfied.
In dealing with books of reference, there will often be found very important discrepancies of statement, different works giving different dates, for example, for the same event in history or biography.
Next to a bible and a dictionary of language, there is no book, perhaps, more common than a biographical dictionary. Our interest in our fellow-men is perennial; and we seek to know not only their characteristics, and the distinguishing events of their lives, but also the time of their birth into the world and their exit from it. This is a species of statistics upon which one naturally expects certainty, since no person eminent enough to be recorded at all is likely to have the epoch of his death, at least, unremarked. Yet the seeker after exact information in the biographical dictionaries will find, if he extends his quest among various authorities, that he is afloat on a sea of uncertainties. Not only can he not find out the date of decease of some famous navigators, like Sir John Franklin and La Perouse, who sailed into unexplored regions of the globe, and were never heard of more, but the men who died at home, in the midst of friends and families, are frequently recorded as deceased at dates so discrepant that no ingenuity can reconcile them.