most intimate. No man can own what he cannot
appreciate. He may possess it by legal documents, but
he cannot own it unless he has eyes to see, ears to
hear, and a heart to feel its charm. This appreciation
Mary Adams possessed by inheritance from her student
father who devoured books with an insatiate hunger.
Nowhere in all New York's labyrinth did she feel as
perfectly at home as in this reading-room. The quiet
which reigned without apparent sign or warning seemed
to belong to the atmosphere of the place. It was
unthinkable that any man or woman should be rude or
thoughtless enough to break it by a loud word.

This room was hers day or night, winter or
summer, always heated and lighted, and a hundred
swift, silent servants at hand to do her bidding.
Around the room on serried shelves, dressed in leather
aprons, stood twenty-five thousand more servants of the
centuries of the past ready to answer any question her
heart or brain might ask of the world's life since the
dawn of Time.

In the stack-room below, on sixty-three miles of
shelves, stood a million others ready to come at her
slightest nod. She loved to dream here of the future,
in the moments she must wait for these messengers she
had summoned. In this magic room the past ceased to
be. These myriads of volumes made the past a myth. It
was all the living, throbbing present--with only the
golden future to be explored.