The CHAIRMAN: Many other representative bodies joined in the effort to secure this meeting for Ottawa and are represented on the platform to-night, but the only other speaker who I shall ask to voice for them or for himself welcoming sentiments is the Hon. Martin Burrell, Minister of agriculture, and, if I may say in parenthesis, also Minister of copyrights, since that comes within his department.
Minister Burrell spoke enthusiastically of the value of books and the habit of good reading and the greater ease with which books could now be secured than formerly. Continuing he said:
"I have heard it said by some skeptical gentlemen that it is true that a librarian never reads a book; in fact, that he cannot be a perfect librarian and read, because he is immediately lost. I do not like to hold that view. I rather hold to the view that the ordinary librarian, perhaps I should say the model librarian, should be a guide, philosopher and friend, and I do not doubt that many of you are very real guides, philosophers and friends to those who are seeking for perhaps they know not what and whom you can direct in right channels with incalculable good to their after life. It is absolutely true that in our modern life we need that guidance. I do not know that I could put it better than in the words of another great book lover, and good library lover too, our friend Robert Louis Stevenson of imperishable memory, who said once there was a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people in the world who if they were not engaged in a conventional occupation were in a state of coma; that the few hours they did not dedicate to a furious toiling in the gold mill were an absolute blank. It is your high privilege to supply that blank; it is your priceless privilege to fill the hours of life which have to be a blank because we cannot train ourselves for them in this more material age,—to fill them up with a companionship and with an influence of the great thoughts of the great writers of all ages."
Concluding, he expressed his pleasure at the prospect of entertaining the delegates at the Experimental Farm on the following Saturday.
The CHAIRMAN: The real president of the Canadian Club found it impossible to be in Ottawa to-night, and I am the poor substitute for Dr. Otto J. Klotz, who has been a great pillar of strength in Ottawa to those who love books and use books. He deputed me to say that he was exceedingly sorry he could not meet so many old friends of his as would surely be in attendance, and still more sorry because he was deprived of the joy of thus paying a little more back to those who love books and use books for all that books and learning have done for him. He is one of our good men. I am sorry he is not here.
We are delighted to have a woman as your president; and in calling on Mrs. Elmendorf to respond may I say—this comes to me after meeting her yesterday and today—that she is altogether a woman of whom it may be said in relation to her office as president of the American Library Association, "thy gentleness has helped to make it great."
The PRESIDENT: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the American Library Association,—I am sure that I but express what you are all feeling in saying that this royal welcome to the Dominion of Canada makes us not only happy but very much honored. Some members of the association are already at home in their own capital, being keepers of "kings' treasuries" of Canada itself. Others of us are librarians from hither and yon in the country beyond the border, but we have all come with "joy and goodly gree" to sit in council in the very capital of the lovely land which is so loyally and affectionately
"Daughter in her Mother's house."
A small party of us came across the border, as William Morris's heroes are wont to move, "by night and cloud," and when we reached the boundary line a sudden inspiration took us and we stooped down and silently, gently gathered that boundary line in our hands and brought its firm lengths with us. I hold what might represent its shining links here in my hands. Therefore, while we visit here with you, in the very capital of the Dominion, while we hold that boundary line thus in our possession, from Boston Harbor down the coast through New York and Charleston to Key West, along the Gulf to New Orleans, across the great West to Pasadena, up the Pacific coast line to Seattle, from East to West, from North to South, there is no let or hindrance to the lines of influence which go forth. Those lines of influence run free without chance for knot or tangle or any such thing.
I hope you will not need to try whether "the King's writ runs" but I am sure that you will find that Shakespeare reigns in our realm, that Tennyson and Bobby Burns touch our hearts in song, and he who writes the songs of a people need not care who writes their laws.