“ Open that door in youth if possible, and it will be the best possession which youth carries into manhood. But open it sometime, for the real harvest time is when he who wishes to read, reads what he wants. It might be more soul-satisfying to me to hand out to my chicken boy books that minister to more attenuated needs—but what about the boy? Is he not better that he finds for himself in the book what feeds his mind? The glory and power of the library is that he who can merely read, may there find what the in-dwelling spirit asks for. ”

“ If there is any aim in education, it seems to me it is to make man a citizen of the world, to make him at home in nature, at home with mankind, at home with all the great forces which play a part in his personal development, which sweep through him into the lives of generations yet unborn. When his mind is filled with such pictures, when the spectator within him goes out to the best and finest and truest of these pictures with genuine appreciation, then you have the development of personality and the development of a great civilization. ”

“ In spite of the Declaration of Independence, no two people on earth are equal except in their right to live, move and have their being. But on this educational bed of Procrustes each soul of our Anglo-Saxon race lays him down to pleasant dreams. Alas for him whose mental legs are too long, or too short, to fit the couch! Dreams? For some they are nightmares! Just because of this narrowness of public education, because of its inability to touch all types of mind, we have that endless procession, out and ever out, from our schools. ”

“ In the choice and in the action is discipline. "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve" is at the parting of the ways every morning, and is seldom displayed in prominence at the dramatic crises of life. Habits are grown in quiet ways, like the shapes of trees and the budding and ripening of fruit. They become the destiny "which shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." ”

“ All these streams of blood flow over Canada and mingle in us. It is not any longer with us merely a toleration of an individual or of an idea from Russia—or the States—but an appreciation of the person and the idea, to make them serve our people better. There is conservation in that. The best we have inherited is the quality of life. Our more immediate ancestors loved liberty, prized intelligence and cherished justice. These they had won by courage, by struggle, by patience and by privation. They left them to us to be improved by education. ”

“ After all, physical setting means much for the glory of human life. This is a fine stretch of a thousand miles for homes, of apple trees and clover blossoms with plenty of running water, with skies decked in beauty by clouds, with showers and sunshine in alternate abundance, and farm houses with yards full of children rolling on the grass picking flowers and climbing the apple trees. ”

“ Whether we look upon our library as a source of recreation, of happiness or profit (and it is all of these) this army, who have fallen out of the ranks in the onward march of education in the school, seem to be our especial wards. To open the door through the book for them is a work worth doing, not as a means of salvation, but as a means of sowing more efficiency and more happiness among men. Ours is not the schoolmaster's task of teaching things: it is the nobler task of showing humanity how to teach itself. ”

“ The staff fit for such service must be of rare material and quality.
The members of the staff are instruments of the highest elaboration and most delicate adjustment. The requisite quality of service can only be rendered under fit conditions. It is not a matter of knowledge, conscience and will solely, it is a matter of these things plus insight, sympathy and response. Exhaustion, or an approach to it, discouragement from lack of appreciation, are like a ground wire for loss of power. Body, mind and spirit are all involved in this service. How conserve their strength, well-being and joy? ”

“ Oh, how promiscuously these pictures come on the screen of the mind, some without the slightest premonition of their coming. It is fascinating to recall the process by which one picture suggested another, and that one a third. At times the spectator within us takes control and says, "I won't have that picture any longer, I will have another." He has the power to summon pictures. There lies the control. If there be in this world anything like self-control, that self-control is in the control of mental imagery. That control is the secret of personality. ”

“ Are our libraries today manned by such assistants?
The plain matter of fact is that we are still over-technical. For petty details in devotion to routine and technique, we crucify personality; we kill the love of books among our library workers, for there is no time to read, no opportunity to make or keep a real acquaintance with books. Schemes to induce others to read are constantly being devised, red tape is ever being wound around our system of details, professional duties are allowed almost brutally to shut us out from contact with the best in literature. ”

“ Does it not appear then that the highest possible service to the public is service to the individual, in giving to the individual stimulus and opportunity for the fullest, most diverse, most perfect development, creating thus a world the more enriched, the more unified, in that each of its members has rich powers, functions and experience of his own?
But the crux is to come. A people, a society, is made up of individuals of diverse tastes and powers, but it includes very many who are far short of being fully alive to the powers which they may possess. ”

“ The procession is endless, and each has his human need, which runs the gamut from utility to the highest joys of life. We talk so much about the struggle for existence that we forget that the best thing in life is just to live. Not all reading is for material profit; some of it is for happiness, and that happiness is purest and most complete which we find for ourselves. It is the discovery of one's own light that brings the abiding joy. What man or woman cannot look back to the inspiration of some finding of his own for which he owes no one but his Creator? ”

“ Let us see to it that one door is kept open for those who discover themselves after school days are gone. There are thousands who fail to grasp their opportunities in the way and at the time that schools prescribe that they should. Some of these find themselves by living, by working, by accident it may be, or by any of the infinite ways in which humanity adjusts itself to its surroundings. For them the library is a path into fields of learning, into avenues of power that make all things possible. Here is the college of our self-educated man. ”

“ For we must ever remember that the commercial success of a nation rests on the skill and productiveness of its artisans. This function of the public library is one that may be measured in dollars and cents, but the other function—of making better men and women, of character-building, of brightening homes by the perusal of good literature, of wholesome fiction, of making better citizens, of appreciating the rights as well as the responsibilities of citizenship, these things can not be measured in coin, but they make for a nation's progress and stability. ”

“ The library habit is akin to the museum habit, the public conservatory habit and the menagerie habit, and differs from the reading habit as visits to these institutions differ from cultivating your own garden patch or rearing your own pets. Perhaps the logical conclusion of these comparisons would seem to be that one must own one's books, but happily one does not have to own a book's body in order to possess its soul. Our present library machinery is admirably adapted to the nurture of the library habit. ”

“ It would be pleasant to think of the precise manner in which a library might entrench itself in business favor, until it became admittedly indispensable. Such an experience is not uncommon. Libraries there are today—adjuncts of successful business houses—which stand on a plane of equality with every other department; whose directors are in every sense advisers; whose position in importance and dignity yields precedence to none. They add efficiency to the entire staff, and by breadth and merit bring distinction to the business they serve. ”

“ It is your business to see that they are well chosen, to see that they are made available, to see that the people are stimulated, that the people are made to realize vividly what it means to have their minds filled with these true, these beautiful, these inspiring pictures which will enable them to interpret life, to enter into it more richly, to get out of it more joy, the joy of intelligent appreciation, the joy of work well done, scientifically done, the joy of comradeship, the joy of association in great enterprises. ”

“ It is quite clear that this aspect of a library as a distinct and active factor in education has only of late impressed itself upon the public mind. It marks the library as a vitalized public utility, from which we are to expect more than has yet been received. Even the best of schools has its limitations because of the inflexibility of its courses of study, and it may fail, often does fail, to touch with any spark of living fire. But the library may provide something for every type of mind. The library cannot create mind or the will and disposition to use it, any more than the school can. ”

“ He is a type of what I have in mind. I do not value him for his ability to make money. Men make money who aren't worth a cent. I measure him by his value as a producer, by his value to humanity as an example, and by his value to a library as a walking delegate for free and unrestricted choice in books. He is an educated man, joyfully occupied in something which engages every faculty of his mind, which he loves, understands, and has mastered for himself. Your country and mine will be the better the more they can grow of that sort of man. ”

“ What is it that fills in the ramshackle, ill-jointed, unpromising frame of much of our school product, and returns us so much of fine manhood and womanhood, and so much of the sound learning and ability of the working world? We must, I think, admit that the world is fairly furnished with men and women, intelligent and useful, whom no college can claim. And every college has its quota of dunces who may never be anything else. ”

“ Knowledge of books and of technique are imperative but the librarian who supplies the right books to all the people must know and understand his fellowmen.
Who are the people whom we are to serve? Do we perchance throw them into one great group and call them the public as distinguished from librarians? Who are we but "the public" to the actor, the artist, the man in the railway office? No, a wise providence has endowed men with a great variety of characters and temperaments, and when environment has further complicated matters, we must try to understand them all. ”