space of their own few years, between walls of mist
which thicken as impenetrably behind them as before. How can life be
worth living on such terms as that? How can man or woman be content with
so little, when so much is offered?

J. N. LARNED.

BOOKLESS HOMES

The bookless homes of the well-to-do people are familiar to all. Inside
those walls no books are to be found but a few gift books, chosen for
their bindings rather than their contents, and perhaps others which some
agent has pressed upon them. What can be done to stimulate reading in
these homes? Ten-cent magazines and cheap stories are devoured by mother
and daughters to the destruction of sane thoughts and connected ideas.
The man of the house each day reads his newspaper, containing accounts
of crimes, accidents and the funny paper. Happily, it also contains
articles of travel, invention and discovery, otherwise his brain would
be weakened.

Young people come from these bookless homes to college each year,
showing great confusion of ideas, vacuity of mind and utter lack of
information. They need us, need libraries, need the force of the state
to help them. Ninety-four per cent of our young people never get into
college. Ninety per cent, it is said, never go to school after they have
passed the age of fourteen years.

The contribution of the library is to elevate the standard of the town.
Books depicting noble, earnest, well-meaning lives will cause the social
standard to progress, and other standards with it.

OREGON LIBRARY COMMISSION.

NEED OF FREE LIBRARIES

A library is an essential part of a broad system of education, and a
community should think it as discreditable to be without a
well-conducted free public library as to be without a good school. If it
is the duty of the state to give each future citizen an opportunity to
learn to read, it is equally its duty to give each citizen an
opportunity to use that power wisely for himself and the state.
Wholesome literature can be furnished to all the readers in a community
at a fraction of the cost necessary to teach them to read, and the power
to read may then become a means to a life-long education.

The books that a boy reads for pleasure do more to determine his ideals
and shape his character than the text-books he studies in the schools.
Bad and indifferent literature is now so common that the boys will have
some sort of reading. If they have a good public library they will read
wholesome