nto better channels the
universal hunger for reading which is entertaining. Do readers want an
exciting novel? What can be more exciting than "Les Miserables" of Victor
Hugo, a book of exceptional literary excellence and power? Literature is
full of fascinating stories, admirably told, and there is no excuse for
loading our libraries with trash, going into the slums for models, or
feeding young minds upon the unclean brood of pessimistic novels. If it
is said that people will have trash, let them buy it, and let the
libraries wash their hands of it, and refuse to circulate the stuff which
no boy nor girl can touch without being contaminated.

Those who claim that we might as well let the libraries down to the level
of the poorest books, because unformed and ignorant minds are capable of
nothing better, should be told that people are never raised by giving
them nothing to look up to. To devour infinite trash is not the road to
learn wisdom, or virtue, or even to attain genuine amusement. To those
who are afraid that if the libraries are purified, the masses will get
nothing that they can read, the answer is, have they not got the entire
world of magazines, the weekly, daily, and Sunday newspapers, which
supply a whole library of fiction almost daily? Add to these plenty of
imaginative literature in fiction and in poetry, on every library's
shelves, which all who can read can comprehend, and what excuse remains
for buying what is neither decent nor improving?

Take an example of the boundless capacity for improvement that exists in
the human mind and human taste, from the spread of the fine arts among
the people. Thirty years ago, their houses, if having any decoration at
all, exhibited those fearful and wonderful colored lithographs and
chromos in which bad drawing, bad portraiture, and bad coloring vied with
each other to produce pictures which it would be a mild use of terms to
call detestable. Then came the two great international art expositions at
Philadelphia and Chicago, each greatly advancing by the finest models,
the standard of taste in art, and by new economies of reproduction
placing the most beautiful statues and pictures within the reach of the
most moderate purse. What has been the result? An incalculable
improvement in the public taste, educated by the diffusion of the best
models, until even the poor farmer of the backwoods will no longer
tolerate the cheap and nasty horrors that once disfigured his wall