the reading public will have every reason to be satisfied. No excuse can be alleged for filling up our libraries with poor books, while there is no dearth whatever of good ones. It is not the business of a public library to compete with the news stands or the daily press in furnishing the latest short stories for popular consumption; a class of literature whose survival is likely to be quite as short as the stories themselves.

Take an object lesson as to the mischiefs of reading the wretched stuff which some people pretend is "better than no reading at all" from the boy Jesse Pomeroy, who perpetrated a murder of peculiar atrocity in Boston. "Pomeroy confessed that he had always been a great reader of 'blood and thunder' stories, having read probably sixty dime novels, all treating of scalping and deeds of violence. The boy said that he had no doubt that the reading of those books had a great deal to do with his course, and he would advise all boys to leave them alone."

In some libraries, where the pernicious effect of the lower class of fiction has been observed, the directors have withdrawn from circulation a large proportion of the novels, which had been bought by reason of their popularity. In other newly started libraries only fiction of the highest grade has been placed in the library from the start, and this is by far the best course. If readers inquire for inferior or immoral books, and are told that the library does not have them, although they will express surprise and disappointment, they will take other and improving reading, thus fulfilling the true function of the library as an educator. Librarians and library boards cannot be too careful about what constitutes the collection which is to form the pabulum of so many of the rising generation.

This does not imply that they are to be censors, or prudes, but with the vast field of literature before them from which to choose, they are bound to choose the best.

The American Library Association has had this subject under discussion repeatedly, and while much difference of opinion has arisen from the difficulty of finding any absolute standard of excellence, nearly all have agreed that as to certain books, readers should look elsewhere than to the public free library for them. At one time a list of authors was made out, many of whose works were deemed objectionable, either from their highly sensational character, or their bad style, or their highly wrought and morbid pictures of human passions, or their immoral tendency. This list no doubt will surprise many, as including writers whose books everybody, almost, has read, or has been accustomed to think well of. It embraces the following popular authors, many of whose novels have had a wide circulation, and that principally through popular libraries.

Here follow the names:

Mary J. Holmes, Mrs. Henry Wood, C. L. Hentz, M. P. Finley, Mrs. A. S. Stephens, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mrs. Forrester, Rhoda Broughton, Helen Mathers, Jessie Fothergill, M. E. Braddon, Florence Marryat, Ouida, Horatio Alger, Mayne Reid, Oliver Optic, W. H. S. Kingston, E. Kellogg, G. W. M. Reynolds, C. Fosdick, Edmund Yates, G. A. Lawrence, Grenville Murray, W. H. Ainsworth, Wilkie Collins, E. L. Bulwer-Lytton, W. H. Thomes, and Augusta Evans Wilson.

Bear in mind, that only English and American novels are included, and those only of the present century: also, that as to many which are included, no imputation of immorality was made. Such a "black list" is obviously open to the charge of doing great injustice to the good repute of writers named, since only a part of the works written by some of them can properly be objected to, and these are not specially named. Bulwer-Lytton, for example, whose "Paul Clifford" is a very improper book to go into the hands of young people, has written at least a dozen other fictions of noble moral purpose, and high literary merit.

Out of seventy public libraries to which the list was sent, with inquiry whether the authors named were admitted as books of circulation, thirty libraries replied. All of them admitted Bulwer-Lytton and Wilkie Collins, all but two Oliver Optic's books, and all but six Augusta Evans Wilson's. Reynolds' novels were excluded by twenty libraries, Mrs. Southworth's by eleven, "Ouida's" by nine, and Mrs. Stephens's and Mrs. Henry Wood's by eight. Other details cannot find space for notice here.

This instance is one among many of endeavors constantly being made by associated librarians to stem the ever increasing flood of poor fiction which threatens to submerge the better class of books in our public libraries.

That no such wholesome attempt can be wholly successful is evident enough. The passion for reading fiction is both epidemic and chronic; and in saying this, do not infer that I reckon it as a disease. A librarian has no right to banish fiction because the appetite for it is abused. He is not to set up any ideal and impossible standard of selection. His most useful and beneficent function is to turn into better channels the universal hunger for reading which is entertaining. Do readers want an exciting novel? What can be more exciting than "Les Miserables" of Victor Hugo, a book of exceptional literary excellence and power? Literature is full of fascinating stories, admirably told, and there is no excuse for loading our libraries with trash, going into the slums for models, or feeding young minds upon the unclean brood of pessimistic novels. If it is said that people will have trash, let them buy it, and let the libraries wash their hands of it, and refuse to circulate the stuff which no boy nor girl can touch without being contaminated.

Those who claim that we might as well let the libraries down to the level of the poorest books, because unformed and ignorant minds are capable of nothing better, should be told that people are never raised by giving them nothing to look up to. To devour infinite trash is not the road to learn wisdom, or virtue, or even to attain genuine amusement. To those who are afraid that if the libraries are purified, the masses will get nothing that they can read, the answer is, have they not got the entire world of magazines, the weekly, daily, and Sunday newspapers, which supply a whole library of fiction almost daily? Add to these plenty of imaginative literature in fiction and in poetry, on every library's shelves, which all who can read can comprehend, and what excuse remains for buying what is neither decent nor improving?

Take an example of the boundless capacity for improvement that exists in the human mind and human taste, from the spread of the fine arts among the people. Thirty years ago, their houses, if having any decoration at all, exhibited those fearful and wonderful colored lithographs and chromos in which bad drawing, bad portraiture, and bad coloring vied with each other to produce pictures which it would be a mild use of terms to call detestable. Then came the two great international art expositions at Philadelphia and Chicago, each greatly advancing by the finest models, the standard of taste in art, and by new economies of reproduction placing the most beautiful statues and pictures within the reach of the most moderate purse. What has been the result? An incalculable improvement in the public taste, educated by the diffusion of the best models, until even the poor farmer of the backwoods will no longer tolerate the cheap and nasty horrors that once disfigured his walls.

The lesson in art is good in literature also. Give the common people good models, and there is no danger but they will appreciate and understand them. Never stoop to pander to a depraved taste, no matter what specious pleas you may hear for tolerating the low in order to lead to the high, or for making your library contribute to the survival of the unfittest.

Is it asked, how can