This intercourse, while a necessary incident of education in the mass, is
only an incident. It is sufficiently obtrusive, however, to make it
evident that any use of school or library building for social purposes is
fit and proper. There is absolutely nothing new nor strange about such
use. In places that cannot afford separate buildings for these purposes,
the same edifice has often served for church, schoolhouse, public library,
and as assembly room for political meetings, amateur theatricals, and
juvenile debating societies. The propriety of all this has never been
questioned and it is difficult to see why it should not be as proper in a
town of 500,000 inhabitants as in one of 500. The incidence of the cost is
a matter of detail. Why should such purely social use of these educational
buildings--always common in small towns--have been allowed to fall into
abeyance in the larger ones? It is hard to say; but with the recent great
improvements in construction, the building of schools and libraries that
are models of beauty, comfort, and convenience, there has arisen a not
unnatural feeling in the public that all this public property should be
put to fuller use. Why should children be forced to dance on the street or
in some place of sordid association when comfortable and convenient halls
in library or school are closed and unoccupied? Why should the local
debating club, the mothers' meeting--nay, why should the political ward
meeting be barred out? Side by side with this trend of public opinion
there has been an awakening realization on the part of many connected with
these institutions that they themselves might benefit by such extended
use.

Probably this realization has come earlier and more fully to the library,
because its educational function is directed so much more upon adults. The
library is coming to be our great continuation school--an institution of
learning with an infinity of purely optional courses. It may open its
doors to any form of adult social activity.