stage, and is seen no more; the great singer, whose voice charmed listening crowds by its melody, is hushed in the grave; the great preacher survives but a single generation in the memory of men; all we who now live and act must be, in a little while, with yesterday's seven thousand years: -but the book of the great writer lives on and on, inspiring age after age of readers, and has in it more of the seeds of immortality than anything upon earth.

CHAPTER 10.

AIDS TO READERS.

There is one venerable Latin proverb which deserves a wider recognition than it has yet received. It is to the effect that "the best part of learning is to know where to find things." From lack of this knowledge, an unskilled reader will often spend hours in vainly searching for what a skilled reader can find in less than five minutes. Now, librarians are presumed to be skilled readers, although it would not be quite safe to apply this designation to all of that profession, since there are those among librarians, or their assistants, who are mere novices in the art of reading to advantage. Manifestly, one cannot teach what he does not know: and so the librarian who has not previously travelled the same road, will not be able to guide the inquiring reader who asks him to point out the way. But if the way has once been found, the librarian, with only a fairly good memory, kept in constant exercise by his vocation, can find it again. Still more surely, if he has been through it many times, will he know it intuitively, the moment any question is asked about it.

It is true of the great majority of readers resorting to a library, that they have a most imperfect idea, both of what they want, and of the proper way to find it. The world of knowledge, they know, is vast, and they are quite bewildered by the many paths that lead to some part or other of it, crossing each other in all directions. And among the would-be readers may be found every shade of intelligence, and every degree of ignorance. There is the timid variety, too modest or diffident to ask for any help at

all, and so feeling about among the catalogues or other reference-books in a baffled search for information. There is the sciolist variety, who knows it all, or imagines that he does, and who asks for proof of impossible facts, with an assurance born of the profoundest ignorance. Then, too, there is the half-informed reader, who is in search of a book he once read, but has clean forgotten, which had a remarkable description of a tornado in the West, or a storm and ship-wreck at sea, or a wonderful tropical garden, or a thrilling escape from prison, or a descent into the bowels of the earth, or a tremendous snow-storm, or a swarming flight of migratory birds, or a mausoleum of departed kings, or a haunted chamber hung with tapestry, or the fatal caving-in of a coal-mine, or a widely destructive flood, or a hair-breadth escape from cannibals, or a race for life, pursued by wolves, or a wondrous sub-marine grotto, or a terrible forest fire, or any one of a hundred scenes or descriptions, all of which the librarian is presumed, not only to have read, but to have retained in his memory the author, the title, and the very chapter of the book which contained it.

To give some idea of the extent and variety of information which a librarian is supposed to possess, I have been asked, almost at the same time, to refer a reader to the origin of Candlemas day, to define the Pragmatic Sanction, to give, out of hand, the aggregate wealth of Great Britain, compared with that of half-a-dozen other nations, to define the limits of neutrality or belligerent rights, to explain what is meant by the Gresham law, to tell what ship has made the quickest voyage to Europe, when she made it, and what the time was, to elucidate the meaning of the Carolina doctrine, to explain the character and objects of the Knights of the Golden Circle, to tell how large are the endowments of the British Universities, to give the origin

of the custom of egg-rolling, to tell the meaning of the cipher dispatches, to explain who was "Extra Billy Smith," to tell the aggregate number killed on all sides during the Napoleonic wars, to certify who wrote the "Vestiges of Creation," or, finally, to give the author of one of those innumerable ancient proverbs, which float about the world without a father.

The great number and variety of such inquiries as are propounded by readers should not appal one. Nor should one too readily take refuge from a troublesome reader by the plea, however convenient, that the library contains nothing on that subject. While this may unquestionably be true, especially as regards a small public library, it should never be put forward as a certainty, until one has looked. Most inquiring readers are very patient, and being fully sensible how much they owe to the free enjoyment of the library treasures, and to the aid of the superintendent of them, they are willing to wait for information. However busy you may be at the moment, the reader can be asked to wait, or to call at a less busy time, when you will be prepared with a more satisfactory answer than can be given on the spur of the moment. What cannot be done to-day, may often be done to-morrow. Remember always, that readers are entitled to the best and most careful service, for a librarian is not only the keeper, but the interpreter of the intellectual stores of the library. It is a good and a safe rule to let no opportunity of aiding a reader escape. One should be particularly careful to volunteer help to those who are too new or too timid to ask: and it is they who will be most grateful for any assistance. The librarian has only to put himself in their place (the golden rule for a librarian, as for all the world besides), and to consider how often, in his own searches in libraries, in the continual, never-ending quest of knowl

edge, he would have been thankful for a hint from some one who knew, or had been over the ground of his search before; and then he will feel the full value to the novice, of such knowledge as he can impart.

He is not to forget that his superior opportunities for learning all about things, with a whole library at command, and within elbow-reach every hour of the day, should impose upon him a higher standard of attainment than most readers are supposed to have reached. In the intervals of library work, I am accustomed to consider the looking up of subjects or authorities as one of my very best recreations. It is as interesting as a game of whist, and much more profitable. It is more welcome than routine labor, for it rests or diverts the mind, by its very variety, while, to note the different views or expressions of writers on the same subject, affords almost endless entertainment. In tracing down a quotation also, or the halfremembered line of some verse in poetry, you encounter a host of parallel poetic images or expressions, which contribute to aid the memory, or to feed the imagination. Or, in pursuing a sought-for fact in history, through many volumes, you learn collaterally much that may never have met your eye before. Full, as all libraries are, of what we call trash, there is almost no book which will not give us something, even though it be only the negative virtue of a model to be avoided. One may not, indeed, always find what he seeks, because it may not exist at all, or it may not be found in the limited range of his small library, but he is almost sure to find something which gives food for thought, or for memory to note. And this is one of the foremost attractions, let me add, of the librarian's calling; it is more full of intellectual variety, of wideopen avenues to knowledge, than any other vocation whatever. His daily quests in pursuit of information to lay be