indulged by those who are admitted to the use of the public
library at the age of twelve or fourteen, are the tastes formed
in the previous years of exclusion. A slight examination of
facts, such as can be furnished by any librarian of experience in
a circulating public library, will show how little force there is
in this objection.

Nor should it be forgotten, in considering this question, that to
very many young people youth is the time when they have more
leisure for reading than any other portion of life is likely to
furnish. At the age of twelve or fourteen, or even earlier, they
are set at work to earn their living, and thereafter their
opportunities for culture are but slight, nor are their
circumstances such as to encourage them in such a work. We cannot
begin too early to give them a bent towards culture which shall
abide by them and raise them above the work-a-day world which
will demand so large a share of their time and strength. The
mechanic, the farmer, the man in any walk of life, who has early
formed good habits of reading, is the one who will magnify his
calling, and occupy the highest positions in it. And to the
thousands of young people, in whose homes there is none of the
atmosphere of culture or of the appliances for it, the public
library ought to furnish the means of keeping pace intellectually
with the more favored children of homes where good books abound
and their subtle influence extends even to those who are too
young to read and understand them. If it fails to do this it is
hardly a fit adjunct to our school system, whose aim it is to
give every man a chance to be the equal of every other man, if he
can.