youth may be the result of intellectual decadence; there is a second as
well as a first childhood, but it is not difficult to distinguish between
them. In general, if a large proportion of those in a community who like
to look at pictures, prefer such as "tell a story," this fact, if the
number of the appreciative is at the same time increasing, means a newly
stimulated interest in art. And similarly, if a large proportion of those
persons who enjoy reading prefer the narrative forms of literature, while
at the same time their total numbers are on the increase, this surely
indicates a newly aroused interest in books. And this is precisely the
situation in which we find ourselves to-day. A very large proportion of
the literature that we circulate is in narrative form--how large a
proportion I daresay few of us realize. Not only all the fiction, adult
and juvenile, but all the history, biography and travel, a large
proportion of literature and periodicals, some of the sciences, including
all reports of original research, and a lesser proportion of the arts,
philosophy and religion, are in this form. It may be interesting to
estimate the percentage of narrative circulated by a large public library,
and I have attempted this in the case of the New York public library for
the year ending July 1, 1906.

Class Per cent. Estimated per
Fiction cent. of narrative
Juvenile 26
Adult 32 ........... 58 58
History ................. 6 6
Biography ............... 3 3
Travel .................. 3 3
Literature .............. 7 3
Periodicals ............. 4 2
Sciences ................ 9 3