THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
We all believe in public libraries. We frequently discuss the library we are to get "bye and bye." We do not find that it is helping the boys and girls who are growing up in our town now. Will the next generation need it more than this? Will the children of the next generation be dearer to us than the boys and girls that now cheer our firesides? Will they use a library better because their parents have not had such privileges?
We all want a library, for ourselves, for our neighbors, for the good name of our village. Why not get it now and be getting the good out of it?
It is only a question of method.
The library when built should benefit all the people, and therefore it should be built by all the people. Give us all a chance to help, and then the library will belong to all of us.
WISCONSIN FREE LIBRARY COMMISSION.
LIBRARIES AND HAPPINESS
The great purpose of a public library is to promote and unite intelligence. It brings together the products of the wise minds of the world. It holds within its walls a collection of all the wise and witty things ever said: these it marks and indexes and offers to its friends.
It is in its community a sort of intellectual minuteman, always ready to supply to every comer something of interest and pleasure. It puts good books, and no others, into the hands of children. It tells about Cinderella and informs you on riots in Moscow. It offers you a novel of modern Japan and a history of Venice of the past. It knows about the milk in the cocoanut, the floods of the river Nile, the advantages of education, the evils of legislation, how to plan a home, why bread won't rise, and can tell more about the mental failings that give Jamaica and Venezuela trouble than most of our congressmen ever dreamed of.