that the librarian has nothing to do; it is beyond his sphere, at least in
so far as he deals with the adult reader. We furnish parks and playgrounds
for our people; we police them and see that they contain nothing harmful,
but we cannot guarantee that they will not be used to excess--that a man
may not, for example, be so enraptured with the trees and the squirrels
that he will give up to their contemplation time that should be spent in
supporting his family. So in the library we may and do see that harmful
literature is excluded, but we cannot be expected to see that books which
are not in themselves injurious are not sometimes used to excess.

I venture to suggest that very much of our feeling of disquietude about
the large use of fiction in the public library and elsewhere arises from
our misapprehension of something that must always force itself upon the
attention in a state of society where public education and public taste
are on the increase. In this case the growth will necessarily be uneven in
different departments of knowledge and taste, and in different localities;
so that discrepancies frequently present themselves. We may observe, for
instance, a quietly and tastefully dressed woman reading, we will say,
Laura Jean Libbey. We are disconcerted, and the effect is depressing. But
the discrepancy may arise in either of two ways. If we have here a person
formerly possessing good taste both in dress and reading, whose taste in
the latter regard has deteriorated, we certainly have cause for sadness;
but if, as is much more likely, we have one who had formerly bad taste of
both kinds and whose taste in dress has improved, we should rather
rejoice. The argument is the same whether the change has taken place in
the same generation or in more than one. Our masses are moving upward and
the progress along the more material lines is often more rapid than in
matters of the intellect. Or, on the contrary, intellectual progress may
be in advance of manners. Such discrepancies are frequently commented upon
by foreign travelers in the United States, who almost invariably