taste, let his library reflect it. Let a man be himself. That there is
virtue in merely surrounding oneself with the great masters of literature
all unread and unloved, I can not see. Better acknowledge your poor taste
than be a hypocrite.

The librarian can not force the classics down the unwilling throats of
those who do not care for them and are perhaps unfitted to appreciate
them. There has been entirely too much of this already and it has resulted
disastrously. Surely, a sane via media is possible, and we may agree that
a man will never like Eschylus, without assuring him that Eschylus is an
out-of-date old fogy, while on the other hand we may acknowledge the
greatness of Homer and Milton without trying to force them upon unwilling
and incompetent readers. After all it is not so much a question of Milton
versus George Ade, as it is of sanity and wholesomeness against vulgarity
and morbidity. And if I were to walk through one city and behold
collections of this latter sort predominating and then through another,
where my eyes were gladdened with evidences of good taste, of love for
humor that is wholesome, sentiment that is sane, verse that is tuneful and
noble, I should at once call on the public librarian and I should say to
him, "Thou art the man!" The literary taste of your community is a
reflection of your own as shown forth in your own institution--its
collection of books, the assistants with which you have surrounded
yourself, your attitude and theirs through you toward literature and
toward the public.

But, someone asks, suppose that I am so fortunate and so happy as to sit
in the midst of such a group of friendly authors; how and how often shall
I re-read? Shall I traverse the group every year? He who speaks thus is
playing a part; he is not the real thing. Does the young lover ask how and
how often he shall go to see his sweetheart? Try to see whether you can
keep him away! The book-lover reopens his favorite volume whenever he
feels like it. Among the works on his shelves are books for every mood,
every shade of varying temper and humor. He chooses for the moment the
friend that best corresponds to it, or it may be, the one that may best
woo him away from it. It may be that he will select none of them, but
occupy himself with a pile of newcomers, some of whom may be candidates
for admission to the inner group. The whole thing--the composition of his
library, his attitude toward it, the books that he re-r