Thus thoughtfully to lay the foundation of the reading habit is a task beyond praise; upon a basis so sound it falls to our lot to rear, if we can, a worthy and durable superstructure. It is time that we passed from books for boys and girls to books for the youth, the man and the woman. And how amid the volume and variety of the accumulated literature of the ages shall we proceed? For light and comfort let us go back a little in the history of education, we shall there find a method substantially that of our friend, Mr. Green. Long before there were any free libraries at all, we had in America a small band of readers and learners who enjoyed unfailing pilotage in the sea of literature. These readers and learners were in the colleges, where the teachers from examination and comparison in the study, the class-room and the laboratory were able to say that such an author was the best in his field, that such another had useful chapters, and that a third was unreliable or superseded. While literature has been growing from much to more, this bench of judicature has been so enlarged as to keep steadily abreast of it. At Harvard there are twenty-six sub-libraries of astronomy, zoology, political economy, and so on; at hand are the teachers who can tell how the books may be used with most profit. Of the best critics of books in America the larger part are to be found at Harvard, at its sister universities and colleges, at the technological institutes and art schools of our great cities. We see their signed reviews in such periodicals as the Political Science Quarterly and the Physical Review; or unsigned in journals of the stamp of the Nation. Fortunately, we can call upon reinforcements of this vanguard of criticism. It would be difficult to name a branch of learning, an art, a science, an exploration, from folk-lore to forestry, from psychical research to geological surveys, whose votaries are not to-day banded to promote the cause they have at heart. These organizations include not only the foremost teachers in the Union, but also their peers, outside the teaching profession, of equal authority in bringing literature to the balances. And the point for us is that these societies, through their publications and discussions, enable these laymen to be known for what they are. Because the American Historical Association is thus comprehensive, its membership has opened the door for an initial task of appraisal, important in itself and significant for the future.
Drawing his two score contributors almost wholly from that Association, Mr. J. N. Larned, of Buffalo, an honored leader of ours, has, without fee or reward, acted as chief editor of an annotated Bibliography of American History. The work is now passing through the composing room of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., of Boston; its contributors include professors of history at Bowdoin, Bryn Mawr, Columbia, Harvard, McGill, Toronto, Tulane and Yale, as well as the Universities of Michigan, Wisconsin and Chicago; our own Association is worthily represented by Messrs. James Bain, Clarence S. Brigham, V. L. Collins, W. E. Foster, J. K. Hosmer, E. C. Richardson and R. G. Thwaites. As a rule the notes are signed. Where for any reason a book demanding notice could not be allotted to a contributor, Mr. Larned has quoted the fairest review he could find in print. He has included not only good books, but such other works as have found an acceptance they do not deserve. All told his pages will offer us about 3400 titles; a syllabus of the sources of American history is prefixed by Mr. Paul Leicester Ford; as an appendix will appear a feature also of great value. In their "Guide to American history," published in 1896, Professors Channing and Hart, of Harvard University, recommended such collections of books as may be had for $5, $10, $20, $50 or $100. Professor Channing is kind enough to say that he will revise these lists and bring them down to date as a contribution to Mr. Larned's work. Professor Channing may, we trust, name the books in each collection in the order in which they may be most gainfully read.
In times past our bibliographies have begun to need enlargement the moment they left the bindery; in the present case that need is for the first time to be supplied. Mr. Larned's titles come to the close of 1899; beyond that period current literature is to be chosen from and appraised with the editorship of Philip P. Wells, librarian of the Yale Law Library, who will issue his series in card form. We hope that he may be ready with his cards for 1900 at the time that Mr. Larned's book appears. Thereafter Mr. Wells' series will probably be published quarter by quarter. Beginning with 1897, Mr. W. Dawson Johnston, now of the Library of Congress, has edited for us a series of annotated cards dealing with the contemporary literature of English history. Both the form and substance of his series are capital. In so far as his cards go directly into catalog cases, where readers and students must of necessity see them, they render the utmost possible aid. If subscribers in sufficient array come forward, Mr. Larned's book may be remolded for issue in similar card form, with a like opportunity for service in catalog cases. In the Cleveland Public Library and its branches useful notes are pasted within the lids of a good many volumes. It is well thus to put immediately under the reader's eye the word which points him directly to his goal, or prevents him wasting time in wanderings of little value or no value at all.
With Mr. Larned's achievement a new chapter is opened in American librarianship; he breaks a path which should be followed up with a discernment and patience emulous of his example. If the whole working round of our literature were sifted and labelled after his method, the worth of that literature, because clearly brought into evidence, might well be doubled at least. Every increase in the availability of our books, every removal of fences, every setting-up of guide-posts, has had a heartening public response. So it will be if we proceed with this effort to bring together the seekers and the knowers, to obtain the best available judgments for the behoof of readers and students everywhere. Economics and politics, so closely interwoven with American history, might well afford the second field for appraisal. A good many libraries still find aid in the "Reader's guide" in this department, although it appeared as long ago as 1891. Next might follow the literature of the sciences pure and applied, together with the useful arts. Among useful arts those of the household might well have the lead, for we must not be academic, or ever lose sight of the duties nearest at hand to the great body of the plain people. Mr. Sturgis and Mr. Krehbiel, in 1897, did an excellent piece of work for us in their "Bibliography of the fine arts"; their guide might profitably be revised and enlarged in its several divisions, not omitting the introductory paragraphs which make the book unique in its class. These tasks well in hand, we might come to such accessions of strength and insight as to nerve us for labors of wider range and greater difficulty, where personal equations may baffle even the highest court of appeal, where it is opinion rather than fact that is brought to the scales. I refer to the debatable ground of ethics, philosophy and theology; and, at the other pole of letters, to the vast stretches of fiction and belles lettres in our own and foreign tongues. With regard to fiction and belles lettres, one of Mr. Larned's methods has a hint for us. In some cases he has found it best to quote Mr. Francis Parkman, Mr. Justin Winsor, or the pages of the Nation, the Dial, the American Historical Review, and similar trustworthy sources. With respect to novels and romances, essays and literary interpretation, it does not seem feasible to engage a special corps of reviewers. It may be a good plan to appoint judicious editors to give us composite photographs of what the critics best worth heeding have said in the responsible press.
It is in the preponderant circulation of fiction, and fiction for the most part of poor quality, that the critics of public libraries find most warrant for attack. They point to the fact that many readers of this fiction are comparatively well-to-do, and are exempted by public taxation from supporting the subscription library and the bookseller. The difficulty has been met chiefly in two ways; by curtailing the supply of mediocre and trashy fiction; by exacting a small fee on issuing the novels brought for a season to a huge demand by advertising of a new address and prodigality. Appraisal, just and thorough, may be expected to render aid more important because radical instead of superficial. In the first place, the best books of recreation, now overlaid by new and inferior writing, can be brought into prominence; secondly, an emphasis, as persuasive as it can be made, ought to be placed upon the more solid stores of our literature. "Business," said Bagehot long ago, "is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously and deeply, but it does not look as if it did." Let it be our purpose to reveal what admirable substance underlies appearances not always seductive to the casual glance. Lowell and Matthew Arnold, Huxley and John Fiske, Lecky and Goldwin Smith are solid enough, yet with no lack of wit or humor to relieve their argument and elucidation. A New York publisher of wide experience estimates that the average American family, apart from school purchases, buys less than two books a year. Newspapers and magazines form the staple of the popular literary diet. What fills the newspapers is mainly news; their other departments of information are often extensive and admirable, but within the limits of the hastily penned paragraph or column they cannot rise to the completeness and quality of a book carefully written and faithfully revised. The plain fact is, and it behooves us to reckon with it, the average man, to whom we bear our credentials as missionaries, looks upon a book as having something biblical about it. To sit down deliberately and surrender himself to its chapters is a task he waves away with strangely mingled awe and dislike. So he misses the consecutive instruction, as delightful as profitable to an educated taste, which authors, publishers and librarians are ready and even anxious to impart.
We hear a good deal in these days about the need of recreation, and not a word more than is true, but let us remember that the best recreation may consist in a simple change of work. Behold the arduous toil of the city lawyer, or banker, as on a holiday tour he climbs a peak of the Alps or the Adirondacks, or wades the chilly streams of Scotland or Canada a salmon rod in his hands. Why does he undergo fatigues so severe? Partly because they are freely chosen, partly because they are fatigues of an unwonted and therefore refreshing kind. So in the field before us to-day. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more fascinating when once its charms are recognized and entertained. Our public schools throughout the land prove that a true story of exploration, of invention or discovery, of heroism or adventure, has only to be well told to rivet a boy's attention as firmly as ever did Robinson Crusoe or Treasure Island. When readers take up from instinctive appetite, or wise incitement, the best books about flowers or birds, minerals or trees, an art, a science, a research, they come to joys in new knowledge, in judgments informed and corrected, unknown to the tipplers and topers whose staple is the novel, good, bad and indifferent. And why, if we can help it, should public money ever be spent for aught but the public good?
With a new sense of what is implied in the trusteeship of literature, if we endeavor in the future to ally ourselves with the worthiest critics of books, we must bid good-bye to the temporary expedients which have cramped and burdened our initial labors. The work of the appraisal of literature requires a home, a Central Bureau, with a permanent and adequately paid staff of editors and assistants. The training of such a staff has already begun; in addition to the experience acquired by those enlisted in our present bibliographical tasks, instruction is now given in advanced bibliography at the New York State Library School at Albany, and doubtless also at other library schools. And at the Central Bureau, which we are bold enough to figure to ourselves, much more should be done than to bring books to the balances. At such a home, in New York, Washington, or elsewhere, every other task should proceed which aims at furthering the good that literature can do all the people. There might be conducted the co-operative cataloging now fast taking form; there should be extended the series of useful tracts begun by that of Dr. G. E. Wire on "How to start a library," by Mr. F. A. Hutchins on "Travelling libraries." At such a center should be exhibited everything to inform the founder of a public library; everything to direct the legislator who would create a library commission on the soundest lines or recast library laws in the light of national experience; there, moreover, should be gathered everything to arouse and instruct the librarian who would bring his methods to the highest plane. Thence, too, should go forth the speakers and organizers intent upon awakening torpid communities to a sense of what they miss so long as they stand outside our ranks, or lag at the rear of our movement. In the fulness of time such a bureau might copy the Franklin Society, of Paris, and call into existence a needed book, to find within this Association a sale which, though small, would be adequate, because free from the advertising taxes of ordinary publishing. To found and endow such a bureau would undoubtedly cost a great deal, and where is the money to come from? We may, I think, expect it from the sources which have given us thousands of public libraries, great and small. Here is an opportunity for our friends, whether their surpluses be large or little. When a gift can be accompanied by personal aid and counsel, it comes enriched. It is much when a goodly gift provides a city with a library, it would be yet more if the donation were to establish and maintain an agency to lift libraries everywhere to the highest efficiency possible, to give literature for the first time its fullest acceptance, its utmost fruitage.
In a retrospective glance at nineteenth century science, Professor Haeckel has said that the hundred years before us are not likely to witness such victories as those which have signalized the era just at an end. Assume for a moment that his forecast is sound, and that it applies beyond the immediate bounds of science, what does it mean for librarianship? It simply reinforces what in any case is clear, namely, that it is high time that the truth and beauty of literature known to the few made its way to all the people, for their enlightenment, consolation and delight. If the future battles of science are to be waged less strenuously than of yore, if scholarship has measurably exhausted its richest mines, let us give the broadest diffusion to the fruits of their triumphs past. In thus diffusing the leaven of culture the public library should take a leading, not a subordinate part. Its treasure is vaster and more precious than ever before. The world's literature grows much like the world's stock of gold, every year's winning is added to the mass already heaped together at the year's first day. In the instruction, entertainment and inspiration of every man and woman there is a three-fold ministry, that of art, of science, and of letters. Because letters bring to public appreciation, to popular sympathy, both art and science, and this in addition to their own priceless argosies, may we not say that of art, science and letters, the greatest of these is letters?