lats, across the way, sending splatterings of furious color across the
sky, one may seat oneself on a bench in the park and witness a
stupendous natural masterpiece. A sunset over the sea can be no more
wonderful than a sunset over this terrible, beautiful, inspiring,
enigmatic domineering flood. Or one may see the sunset from the
readingroom of the Cossitt Library, with its fine bay window commanding
the river almost as though it were the window of a pilot-house.

The Cossitt Library is only one of several free libraries in the city.
There is, for example, a free library in connection with the Goodwyn
Institute, an establishment having an endowment of half a million
dollars, left to Memphis by the late William A. Goodwyn. The Goodwyn
Institute provides courses of free lectures, by well-known persons, on a
great variety of subjects. The library is designed to add to the
educational work. Books are not, however, loaned, as they are from the
Cossitt Library, an institution to which I found myself returning more
than once; now for a book, now to look at the interesting collection of
mound-builder relics contained in an upper room, now merely because it
is a place of such reposeful hospitality that I liked to make excuses to
go back.

The library, a romanesque building of Michigan red sandstone, is by a
southern architect, but is in the style of Richardson, and is one of the
few buildings in that style which I have ever liked. It was given to
Memphis as a memorial to Frederick H. Cossitt, by his three daughters,
Mrs. A.D. Juilliard, Mrs. Thomas Stokes, and Mrs. George E. Dodge, all
of New York. Mr. Cossitt was born in Granby, Connecticut, but as a young
man moved South and in 1842 adopted Memphis as his home, residing there
until 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War he made an amicable
division of his business with his partner, and removed to New York,
where he resided until the time of his death. Finding among his papers a
memorandum indicating that he had intended to endow a library in
Memphis, his daughters carried out his wish.

Having already spoken of a number of Memphis' interesting citizens, I
find myself left with an ill-assorted trio of names yet to be mentioned,
because, different as they are, each of the three supplies a definite
part of the character of the city. First, then, Memphis has the honor of
possessing what not many of our cities possess: a man who stands high
among the world's artist-bookbinders.