te, Shakespeare,
Cervantes, and Goethe's Faust. Prof. Charles E. Norton of Harvard
remarked that this list might even be abridged so as to embrace only
Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. I can only regard such exclusiveness as
misleading, though conceding the many-sidedness of these great writers.
To extend the list is the function of all public libraries, as well as of
most of the private ones. Next after the really essential books, that
library will be doing its public good service which acquires all the
important works that record the history of man. This will include
biography, travels and voyages, science, and much besides, as well as
history.

Special pains should be taken in every library to have every thing
produced in its own town, county, and State. Not only books, but all
pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, and even broadsides or circulars,
should be sought for and stored up as memorials of the present age,
tending in large part rapidly to disappear.

In selecting editions of standard authors, one should always
discriminate, so as to secure for the library, if not the best, at least
good, clear type, sound, thick paper, and durable binding. Cheap and
poor editions wear out quickly, and have to be thrown away for better
ones, which wise economy should have selected in the first place. For
example, a widely circulated edition of Scott's novels, found in most
libraries, has the type so worn and battered by the many large editions
printed from the plates, that many letters and words are wanting, thus
spoiling not only the pleasure but abridging the profit of the reader in
perusing the novels. The same is true of one edition of Cooper. Then
there are many cheap reprints of English novels in the Seaside and other
libraries which abound in typographical errors. A close examination of a
cheap edition of a leading English novelist's works revealed more than
3,000 typographical errors in the one set of books! It would be
unpardonable carelessness to buy such books for general reading because
they are cheap.

Librarians should avoid what are known as subscription books, as a rule,
though some valid exceptions exist. Most of such books are profusely
illustrated and in gaudy bindings, gotten up to dazzle the eye. If works
of merit, it is better to wait for them, than to subscribe for an
unfinished work, which perhaps may never reach completion.

A librarian or book collector should be ever observant of what he may
find to