ine. I expect when you
have read all this you will say: 'Then do let us go to the Museum. Even
if I don't understand, I'd like to see it.'

So we will go to this solid massive building across the wide space of
gravel in front, where the pigeons wheel round our heads and run about
on the ground almost under our feet, up the wide, shallow steps under
the huge columns into the great entrance-hall. It is all free. The
smallest child and the most important man can walk in there alike
without anyone's asking questions. As we stand in the entrance-hall
there is a wide staircase on one side, and in front of us are swinging
glass doors leading by a passage to a great room called the
reading-room. To go into this room it is necessary to get permission
from the attendants in the hall, who make you sign your name on a piece
of paper. Once inside, the size of the vast room almost takes your
breath away. There is a great dome ceiling, and the walls are lined with
books; there are shelves upon shelves, and thousands and thousands of
them. In the middle of the room is a circular desk, where some men are
sitting; and round this desk, again, there are shelves lined with huge
books, and all these books are filled with nothing but the names of the
other books which are kept at the Museum, and which anyone can see by
taking certain precautions. People are allowed to walk in just to see
the room, by asking in the hall; but if anyone wants to study here he
has to write beforehand for a ticket, then he can go in and look in the
catalogue (that is what the big books full of names are called) for the
book he wants. He writes it on a slip of paper, and puts on the paper
also the number of any seat in the room he has chosen. Then he places
the piece of paper in a basket and goes away and waits, perhaps twenty
minutes, for the books he wants--for he can ask for any number at one
time--and presently a man brings them to him.

From the centre desk there are other long lines of desks like the spokes
of a wheel stretching out from the middle to the sides of the room, and
here numbers of people sit reading all day long. It is very interesting
that so many people should work so hard. Look at one of them. He is an
old clergyman, gray-haired, and with many wrinkles on his face. He is
reading books of sermons so that he can preach next Sunday a sermon made
up out of the books. Next to him is a young girl dressed very plainly.
She has eyeglasses on, and loo