| Show OBJECTION iro t 0 PUBLIC franq LIBRARIES this to a world of compensations there is in it neither a good nor an evil thing that is wholly without oil off set just after the public library gw fairly under way in this city a writer comes along and asks in the interior Inter tor chicago are public libraries do de 7 moralizing moral izing under this query an aa a caption he says for ten years or more I 1 have not bought I 1 dare say a dozen books my excuse being that I 1 have access to two of the largest and best equipped public libraries in the country I 1 find the resources of these libraries adequate to all my professional needs and so 0 o fw fur as mental pleasure is concerned they are inexhaustible sources of entertainment 1 yet when I 1 look at ray my own furnished bookshelves book shelves and s 4 cwi the days when as a college boy t X US to count it a months delight to adum for and buy and devour and pen and d reread some volume of my Mlp acial desire I 1 can not help feeling something good and helpful some morally and intellectually seimu S has gone out for my life aff SK it not true that there is some significance in the right owner map of books I 1 say the right owner 1 ship because to possess them as mere T 18 or furniture or ornaments is beitter er a moral or an intellect intellectual ul bene IM jB Sr the young person who has a desire to make a book his legal fW perty will not exhaust this desire baesl I 1 the book has become his mental t cwb alomi spiritual pl ritual property also one of my used to say that boys are i biers y misers miners and if they put a into a thing they will be sure m ake two pennies worth of out of it As I 1 look back upon toy my experience I 1 am convinced that m true at least of books I 1 am RK to confess that I 1 have never got tta real inmost soul and essence ibok since I 1 quit buying them f x we e public library deprives a per ante at the real moral helpfulness that from the ownership of books it wll negatively dively at least and in so far ang institution anything abates tes moral vigor and vitality is if ng no matter how negative T erect the influence may be it just j as P positively sit ively on the wrong |
