began
to pitch and slide and tumble! Should we not think that some horrible
epidemic had laid its hand on us? The ladies with their Medici and their
Travels are not isolated instances. Ask the librarians; they know, but in
countless instances they do not tell, for fear of casting ridicule upon
the hundreds of intelligent clubwomen whom they are proud to help. In many
libraries there is a standing rule against repeating or discussing the
errors and slips of the public, especially to the ever hungry reporter. I
break this rule here with equanimity, and even with a certain degree of
hope, for my object is to awaken my readers to the knowledge that part of
the reading public is suffering from a malady of some kind. Later I may
try my hand at diagnosis and even at therapeutics. And I am taking as an
illustration chiefly the reading done by women's clubs, not because men do
not do reading of the same kind, or because it is not done by individuals
as well as by groups; but because, just at the present time, women in
general, and clubwomen in particular, seem especially likely to be
attacked by the disease. It must be remembered also that I am writing from
the standpoint of the public library, and I here make humble
acknowledgement of the fact that many things in the educational field,
both good and bad, go on quite outside of that institution and beyond its
ken.

The intellectual bonds between the library and the woman's club have
always been close. Many libraries are the children of such clubs; many
clubs have been formed in and by libraries. If any mistakes are being made
in the general policies and programmes of club reading, the librarian
would naturally be the first to know it, and he ought to speak out. He
does know it, and his knowledge should become public property at once.
But, I repeat, although the trouble is conspicuous in connection with the
reading of women's clubs, it is far more general and deeply rooted than
this.

The malady's chief symptom, which is well known to all librarians, is a
lack of correspondence between certain readers and the books that they
choose. Reading, like conversation, is the meeting of two minds. If there
is no contact, the process fails. If the cogs on the gearwheels do not
interact, the machine can not work. If the reader of a book on algebra
does not understand arithmetic; if he tackles a philosophical essay on the
representative function without knowing what the phrase means; if he