that often assails the ear when working in our larger public
libraries? Some innocent-looking individual will be reading quietly some
paces away, so quietly and decorously in fact that one's heart goes out
to him as a sympathetic fellow-bookman. Then enters some one whom he
knows. In a flash he becomes a fiend incarnate. A word or two of greeting
spoken in an ordinary voice one would pardon; but a long conversation is
carried on in a monotonous forced undertone, terrible in its intensity.
It is impossible to read so long as the conversation lasts, and murder
surges in one's heart. O for the power to drop ten atlas folios in a pile
upon their heads! People do not realise the carrying power of a strained
and lowered voice. Generally the volume of sound is the same as when
speaking aloud, for the tone is merely lowered and the same amount of
breath is used. But often more force is required to vibrate the slackened
vocal chords, and the maddening sound reaches to every corner of the
building.

In the Reading Room of the British Museum one is constantly aware of this
buzzing going on all over the room. Would that the rule enforced at one
of our older monasteries were applied: 'In the Chafynghowys al brethren
schal speke latyn or els keep silence.' This would indeed ensure
quietness nowadays. The rule for nuns, however (who, presumably, were not
so well acquainted with Latin) would be better still. They were not to
speak at all.[15]

So, if it be possible, see to it that your library, study, sanctum, or
whatever you may call that one room in the house which is sacred to the
daughters of Mnemosyne, is really your own: that it be a close closet to
which you (and you alone) may retire at all seasons, certain in the
knowledge that by closing the door you may shut out effectually all
earthly cares and interruptions. Whether you are engaged in research
merely for the gratification of your desire to possess knowledge, or
whether literary production be your aim, unless you may study undisturbed
your labours will never bear their full fruit. Interrupted, your
knowledge will be scanty, diverse, and generally inapplicable, your
literary output sketchy, incoherent, and disconnected.

Perhaps it is this incubus of interruption that drives so many men to
working late at night. Doubtless those whose habit it is to work at that
season produce just as good work in those hours as at any other time;
possibly better, for habit may have accust