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 ORRINGTON LUNT LIBRARY 
 
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 EXERCISES AT THE OPENING 
 
 ORRINGTON LUNT LIBRARY 
 BUILDING 
 
 SEPTEMBER 26, 1894 
 
 
 EVANSTON, ILL. 
 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY 
 

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 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY. 
 
 THE ORRINGTON LUNT LIBRARY BUILDING. 
 
 The library building is named in honor of Mr. Orrington Lunt, 
 President of the Board of Trustees of the University, a friend of 
 the institution, identified with its counsels and policy from its 
 foundation. 
 
 At an early date in the history of the University, Mr. Lunt's 
 generous interest placed the Library in permanent association with his 
 name. In the year 1865, he gave to the Trustees a valuable prop- 
 erty in Evanston as a library endowment ; this fund, in the official 
 records of the institution, is designated by the name of its donor. In 
 1 89 1, he crowned this earlier gift by the offer of fifty thousand dollars 
 to be applied to the erection of a library building. 
 
 Better library accommodation had long been one of the Univer- 
 sity's most urgent needs. The Trustees, accordingly, promptly 
 accepted Mr. Lunt's munificent offer, and at once took steps to secure 
 the additional amount deemed requisite for a new library build- 
 ing. It appeared that a building, adequate to the growing needs of 
 the institution, could be erected at a cost of about one hundred 
 thousand dollars, and plans were prepared on the basis of that 
 estimate. 
 
 Generous subscriptions were received from friends in Evanston 
 in aid of the proposed expenditure. Deserving of special acknowl- 
 edgment, is a contribution of five thousand dollars received from 
 Mrs. Elizabeth A. Hatfield, a gift to the University in memory of 
 her husband, Rev. Robert M. Hatfield, D.D., for many years, until 
 his death, a trustee of the institution, and a friend held in grateful 
 remembrance for fruitful service of labor and of influence. 
 
 The remainder of the amount required was advanced from the 
 University's own resources. The construction of the building was 
 
 3 
 
begun in the summer of 1893; the work was completed in the 
 summer following. A little later, the new cases and other equip- 
 ments were put in place, the books were transferred from the old 
 library rooms in University Hall, and the new building was made 
 completely ready for use. The formal opening took place on the 
 twenty-sixth of September, 1894, soon after the annual assembling 
 of the University classes. 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF THE LIBRARY BUILDING. 
 
 The following description of the building from the Library 
 Journal is inserted, with revision in some details. 
 
 The Orrington Lunt Library is situated on the campus of 
 Northwestern University, and covers an area of seventy by one 
 hundred and sixty feet. The building is planned so as to admit of 
 future additions without sacrifice of exterior effect or interior 
 convenience. The outer walls are of buff Bedford limestone ; the 
 roof is of red tile. The construction is an employment of the 
 system sometimes called " mill-construction ; " it is believed to be 
 practically fire-proof. 
 
 The style of architecture is an adaptation of the Italian Renais- 
 sance. The outlines are simple ; there is little ornamentation, but the 
 whole effect is pleasing and harmonious. A spacious semi-circular 
 portico, covering the entrance, is supported by six Ionic columns ; on 
 the frieze, in raised lettering, is the inscription, " Orrington Lunt 
 Library." On either side of the vestibule are cloak-rooms. A 
 broad oak staircase leads to the second floor, where are an assembly 
 room seating four hundred and eighty persons, an art-room, and 
 seminary-rooms. The third story, extending over the central portion 
 of the building, is given to offices and class-rooms. The basement, 
 well lighted and thoroughly finished, contains a large document room, 
 a journal room, toilet rooms, and other apartments not yet 
 definitely assigned. 
 
 The main story is devoted to the larger library uses. Occupying 
 the central section and the adjacent wing, is the book-room. 
 Separated from this room by the delivery-desk and the catalogue- 
 cases, and occupying the remainder of the floor, is the reading-room, 
 which has an accommodation of one hundred and fourteen sittings. 
 
5 
 
 The windows are all large, and placed above the reading-tables at 
 favorable height for light and ventilation. Beneath the windows, 
 around three sides of the reading-room, are wall-cases. In these 
 cases are placed, directly accessible to students, periodicals — both 
 the current numbers and the completed volumes most frequently- 
 consulted — cyclopaedias, and other reference books, and also the 
 works reserved from time to time for special service by different 
 departments of instruction. The reading-tables are provided with 
 slides or extension leaves. The chairs and tables, like the entire 
 wood-work on this floor, are of oak in handsome finish. The wains- 
 coting and the ceiling are elegantly panelled. The entire floor, 
 through both the reading-room and book-room, is covered with 
 Scotch cork carpet. 
 
 Card catalogue-cases, made by the Library Bureau, stand at each 
 end of the delivery-desk, each case containing forty drawers. The 
 space under these cases is utilized for locked cabinets for large illus- 
 trated works, and the like. The delivery-desk is provided with con- 
 venient drawers. The bookcases in the book-room are of such 
 height that all books can be reached from the floor. A private 
 stairway leads from the book-room to the basement. All the stories 
 are connected with the book-room by a book-lift and speaking-tube. 
 In a central extension of the building, are the librarian's room and 
 the cataloguing-room. They are of ample dimensions, and are suitably 
 furnished with desk, tables, cases, and a series of locked cabinets 
 with plate-glass doors. Two safety vaults are also provided. The 
 heating is by steam from a detached station. The lighting is by gas 
 and electricity. A ventilating system extends throughout the 
 building. 
 
 The capacity of the library on the main floor, including with 
 the book-room the reference cases in the reading-room, is nearly 
 100,000 volumes. The document room in the basement will hold 
 upwards of 25,000 volumes. 
 
 The wall decorations were planned and the special designs 
 executed by Miss Ida J. Burgess, of Chicago. The frieze in the 
 reading-room and the book-room delights the bibliophile. The 
 design includes thirty-two panels of varying size ; in each panel is a 
 shield surrounded by a conventional design, and on the shield 
 appears some famous printer's mark, in such colors as harmonize 
 
with the general color scheme. Here you may look up and see 
 Caxton's mark, or that of Aldus Manutius, or of the Elzevir family, 
 and so on. In the vestibule four panels symbolize, in characteristi- 
 cally draped figures, the four nations which have most influenced 
 modern learning — the Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman. The 
 assembly-room in the second story is also tastefully decorated. 
 
 The Architect was William A. Otis, of Chicago. The building is 
 believed, both in beauty of design and in general adaptation to its 
 purpose, to do honor to his professional taste and skill. 
 
 The exercises of the formal opening of the Library took place 
 in the afternoon and evening of the twenty-sixth of September, 
 1894. In the afternoon the exercises were held in the Assembly 
 Hall of the Library Building ; in the evening, at the First Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, Evanston. 
 
 The following was the Order of Exercises in the afternoon : 
 
 INVOCATION — Rev. Franklin W. Fisk, D.D., LL.D., President of Chicago 
 Theological Seminary. 
 
 VOCAL SOLO — MR. KARLETON HACKETT. 
 
 ADDRESS OF PRESENTATION — Mr. Orrington Lunt. 
 
 ADDRESS OF ACCEPTANCE — President Henry Wade Rogers, LL.D. 
 
 VOCAL SOLO — MR. KARLETON HACKETT. 
 
 DEDICATION ODE — Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller. 
 
 ADDRESS — Charles Kendall Adams, LL.D., President of the University of 
 Wisconsin. 
 
 benediction. 
 
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 ^7ri/^(yC^ oCoy^^ 
 
ADDRESS OF PRESENTATION. 
 By Mr. Orrington Lunt. 
 
 The possession and use of a Library have always appeared to 
 me a fundamental condition of intellectual advancement ; and over a 
 quarter of a century ago I laid aside, and gave to this institution, 
 certain property as a fund for a library endowment. The erection of 
 a suitable building seemed then a long way off, a realization I could 
 hardly count upon seeing. 
 
 It is a great happiness, therefore, to me to-day, to look about 
 upon this completed work, and to believe that here, for many, many 
 years to come, the best thoughts of men will be found ; and that all 
 that those of us who are passing off the stage could desire to say to 
 the youth here gathered, will be better said to them through books 
 whose influence for good is not measured by our brief years. 
 
 The eminent librarian, our lamented fellow-citizen, Dr. William 
 F. Poole, one of our trustees, and a member of our Building Com- 
 mittee, in an address delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 
 spoke to us words on this subject that ought not to be forgotten. 
 
 Books, he told us, are the tools of his profession to a literary 
 and scientific worker ; the library should be his class-room and 
 laboratory. "All who go forth as graduates should have such an 
 intelligent and practical knowledge of books, as will aid them in their 
 studies through life and make the use of books a perpetual delight and 
 refreshment. Books are wiser than any professor and all the faculty ; 
 and they may be made to give up much of their wisdom to the 
 student who knows where to go for it and how to extract it. It is 
 one of the most delightful and inspiring incidents in a student's 
 experience when he discovers that he has a key to the treasury of 
 knowledge, and so finds that he has a function in life." 
 
 I am happy to believe that this Library will effect its end, in 
 advancing scholarship in this institution of learning, in aiding in the 
 defence of high principles, and in offering opportunities for earnest 
 research and the honest pursuit of truth. Whatever is attacked or 
 defended by the written word is assigned, as time goes on, to its own 
 
8 
 
 place. That which is personal, small, and intolerant soon dies ; and 
 only what is rational and noble, in the hard struggle for truth, 
 survives, to wield eventually its just power, unfettered and free. We 
 want to learn what books are for, and how to use them ; we want to 
 lay the foundations for scholarly traditions. If we collect here what 
 is good in letters and true in authority, may we not justly hope that 
 capacity to appreciate and appropriate will grow by what it feeds on, 
 and that our students will not fail of wise training, and ennobling 
 culture ? 
 
 From long experience among you, fully in touch with your 
 ambitions and efforts, I know well how you as a Faculty have 
 striven to open the minds of your students to the high inspiration of 
 literature, and the noble challenge of science. I know how hard 
 some of you now before me have labored through all these years, 
 notwithstanding discouragements sufficient to break down any but . 
 the loftiest purpose, that this University might better realize its ideal, 
 and become established upon enduring foundations. 
 
 Having been one of the charter members, and a trustee from its 
 beginning, you will all bear me witness that I have watched the 
 course of our beloved institution with deep interest and constant 
 loyalty. Unused, as I am, to public speaking, this association of 
 years furnishes my only reason for consenting to address you. 
 
 We have given in love and labor what we could. It rejoices me 
 that we can meet on this afternoon and evening, happily conscious 
 that we are all working together for one end ; and that the erection 
 and equipment of our Library is but a further step in our united 
 effort to maintain here an institution of the first rank, and more 
 largely engage and justify the affection and sympathy of our 
 graduates. 
 
 It has been our desire and ambition to have a substantial and 
 commodious building, which should be a center of activity in our 
 University. We owe a lasting debt to our conscientious and 
 accomplished Architect, Mr. William A. Otis, who has put into this 
 beautiful form what we hope will fulfill its promise to all student life 
 here, and prove a general source of helpfulness and inspiration. His 
 watchful personal attention has been invaluable in producing the 
 harmony, solidity, convenience, and general excellence of this 
 structure ; we take pleasure in assuring him of our appreciation. I 
 
9 
 
 want to tell him, individually, that the building has become very dear 
 to me, and that it seems beautiful in my eyes. I look around, and 
 remember that we have the Christian warrant, that all that brings 
 beauty and graciousness into our human life is a power for good in 
 human character. 
 
 There seem to me to have been great thoroughness and pains- 
 taking in the fulfillment of contracts ; and to one going in and out 
 among them almost daily, the artists and workmen have appeared 
 especially faithful in meeting responsibility. To recognize this, and 
 publicly tender thanks for it, is a pleasant duty. 
 
 And if I may now speak a few words to the young men and 
 women who are to gather here that they may gain strength and enthu- 
 siasm for lofty purpose and noble endeavor, I would earnestly say to 
 them, — remember that, whatever you are, your chief effectiveness in life 
 will be due to the high ground you take ; that your weight in advancing 
 any cause will be measured, in the end, by your standard of character. 
 These are your years of apprenticeship. If leadership ever falls to 
 you, you will need all the inspiration you may receive here, and all 
 the power and skill that arduous work can give. Every consideration 
 urges you to make the most of your advantages. The treasures of 
 the past, the possessions of the present, and the promise of the future 
 seem to one of my age, looking back upon many deprivations and an 
 entire lack of these splendid chances, to be all yours for the seeking — 
 all within your reach. 
 
 I would assure you that while I still live and pray, I shall still 
 hope and pray that from the collection of books made and to be 
 made here, and through your intelligent use of them, there will 
 radiate an influence enriching all life, by elevating, ennobling, and 
 purifying it. 
 
 George William Curtis spoke noble words, when as a young man 
 to young men, in a dark hour of our Nation's history, he made his 
 ringing and powerful appeal for the enfranchisement of the down- 
 trodden and enslaved. He called, in clarion tones, upon generous 
 youth to arise, and answer by coiiduct, to face squarely the tremen- 
 dous issues of their moral and intellectual life, to weigh well in the 
 balance the duties of scholars as a class, wherever humanity is 
 concerned, of whatever race or color. " Gentlemen," he said, " the 
 scholar is the representative of thought among men, and his duty to 
 
 
10 
 
 society is to introduce thought and the sense of justice into human 
 affairs. He was not made a scholar to satisfy the newspapers, or the 
 parish beadles, but to serve God and man. While other men pursue 
 what is expedient, and watch with alarm the flickering of the funds, 
 he is to pursue the truth and watch the eternal law of justice." 
 
 The gifted men of our community who constitute the faculties of 
 our colleges, by their suggestions and influence, their authority and 
 guidance, will lead you into new paths, and stimulate your love for 
 the best things. Their whole-hearted service to you will reap 
 adequate reward only in your individual achievements. You can 
 justify their efforts by furnishing a reason for them in your own 
 acquirements and usefulness. 
 
 We cannot close without speaking of those to whom we have 
 been so largely indebted in the past. It is fitting, first, to make 
 mention of that honored benefactor whose large and generous gift 
 of books will keep him ever in grateful remembrance. I refer 
 to our late fellow-citizen, Mr. Luther Greenleaf, whose valuable gift 
 to the Library renders us ever his debtor. It is with pleasure I bear 
 testimony also to the service of my early associate trustees, most of 
 whom have gone to their home beyond. As I review the past, 
 they rise before me now in sacred and sanctified light. They worked 
 faithfully — they were true men ; the past is made alive to me to-day 
 by memories of labors and hopes shared with them. Yes, their works 
 have followed them. The moral and religious lessons of lives like 
 theirs serve to encourage us, and lift us up beyond ourselves, as we 
 review them. You may all take courage, when you hear of those 
 who toiled for you in that early day, — "the day of small things." 
 Remember, we have entered into their labors. 
 
 And can we forget those of clear intellect and dominant gifts, 
 whose daily life and labor in our midst fulfilled the promise made as 
 they in turn accepted the office of President of the University and 
 assumed its responsibilities? We turn toward them with loving 
 memory, and recall afresh their noble careers as incentive and 
 example. They walked worthily, — showed, in laborious and faithful 
 devotion to the cause of higher education, the character of lofty 
 leadership. 
 
 He, the great-hearted one, who lies under the sod in Rose Hill, 
 who died with all his armor on, needs no fresh laurel laid on his 
 
II 
 
 grave. Dr. Cummings illustrated, by the majesty of his life, the 
 great truth that character is the crown of crowns ; and now " he 
 sleeps well." He did not see the light which touches, even as the 
 sunrise touches the hill-tops, the heads of the young and ardent 
 workers of to-day. Yet he, with us whose feet are rapidly nearing 
 the shadowy valley, had hope of the better things to come. Well do 
 we all know, as he knew, that all things which are true and honest, 
 just and pure, come from Him who is the perfect beauty and perfect 
 truth ; and so believing, we look patiently for that revelation which is 
 to turn darkness into light, falsehood into truth, hatred into love, and 
 the whole earth from evil unto good ; and out of errors, blunders, 
 ignorance, and crime, lead unto the perfect service of Him who is 
 " the way, the truth, and the life." 
 
 And now to the galaxy before me, to you who constitute our 
 hope and dependence — you living men of progress and lovers of 
 learning, you who are engaged in the high pursuit of teaching.^to 
 you, old and young, who by association, example, and instruction, 
 are so largely contributing to our advancement, to you, President and 
 Professors of Northwestern University, I offer assurance of my pro- 
 found esteem, and my cordial congratulations. Here is the Library. 
 It is yours, with its class-rooms, its lecture-rooms, its books, its 
 periodicals and newspapers ; yours, with its inspirations and posses- 
 sions, given to this University in cheerful love, and in full confidence 
 that it will be consecrated by patient industry and fruitful research, 
 and that the gift will be multiplied by centuries of use ; that it will 
 enlighten all who come into its studious and quiet atmosphere, and 
 more firmly establish that which you are aiming to teach and 
 embody. I pray in hope and faith that it will become a great active 
 and potential force for good. 
 
 I thank you all for your patience and kindly consideration. I 
 shall never speak to you all again, but I shall remember this occasion 
 with gratitude, and add the bright experience of this day to my most 
 treasured memories. 
 
 Standing before you, where I have so seldom stood in my life 
 before, all unused, as I am, to the platform, and wholly a novice in 
 public speaking, reminded, as one of my age must constantly be 
 reminded, of those who have passed beyond our human vision 
 whither all feet are surely tending, reminiscence has had perhaps too 
 
12 
 
 large a share in my thought and speech. This you will pardon to 
 my years. And in closing, — not mournfully, but rejoicingly, — I 
 quote, and may even dare to appropriate, a sentence of Carlyle, 
 spoken of his father, whom he loved and whose death left him 
 conscious of irreparable loss, and yet kindled his faith to exalted 
 expression: " I, too, as he did, feel my feet on the Everlasting Rock, 
 and through time with its death, can to some degree see into eternity 
 with its life." 
 
 Farewell ! May the Great Father bless you all ! May He give 
 us all the assurance of eternal life, and bring us eventually to perfect 
 holiness and perfect love ! 
 
 ADDRESS OF ACCEPTANCE. 
 By President Rogers. 
 
 The pleasant duty now devolves on me of accepting in the name 
 of the University the noble building which has been thus formally 
 presented, and which is to be from this day onward the beautiful home 
 of the library. In accepting this edifice I should fail to represent 
 fittingly those for whom I speak unless I expressed to you, Mr. Lunt, 
 the chief donor, and to the other good friends whose generous contri- 
 butions, augmenting your gift, aided in the erection of the building, the 
 gratitude with which the University regards what you have done. The 
 trustees and the faculties, the alumni and the students of the Univer- 
 sity join in an expression of gratitude ; and I am sure they one and 
 all honor you. Not only do the friends of this University applaud 
 your generous action, but the friends of other Universities, some of 
 them represented here to-day by their distinguished presidents, join 
 with us in expressing their appreciation of the service you have ren- 
 dered to the cause of learning. 
 
 The Library of a University is " the fountain of its intellectual 
 power." A stranger coming here for the first time, and seeking to 
 know something of the intellectual life which here abounds, will seek 
 this place first of all, and will, in a large measure, form his estimate 
 of the greatness of the institution here established according to what 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 13 
 
 he shall find or fail to find within these walls. A great University 
 presupposes a great library. You and those who joined with you in 
 the erection of this splendid building well understood the truth of 
 what I am saying, and you were large-hearted as well as large-brained, 
 and your generous action has made it possible for the University to 
 enter this day on a new era in the history of its development. We 
 had many urgent needs but none so important as the one you have 
 supplied. And now let us hope that other men large of heart and 
 rich in purse, as they look on this which you have done, may be led to 
 emulate your example, and that ere long other stately piles will rise — 
 a chapel large enough to contain all our students — a museum that 
 will contain all our collections — a gymnasium suited to the needs of 
 a university such as ours. 
 
 We do not forget here to-day that you are the Nestor of our 
 University — honored in your old age, as was the aged hero of the 
 Greeks, by those who seek for your advice because of the wisdom of 
 your counsel. Nearly half a century ago you chose this place, then a 
 waste, to be the seat of the University you were aiding to establish, 
 and from that day to this, you have watched over its destinies with 
 the devotion of a father for a child beloved. We rejoice with you 
 that God has spared your life to see these results, and we congratulate 
 you to-day that the University which you helped to found has grown 
 during your lifetime to so noble proportions. 
 
 Some who are before me will remember the account which Eve- 
 lyn has left of his visit to Amsterdam in 1641, and of how he went 
 up into the tower of the cathedral to note the playing of the marvel- 
 lous chimes. The story is that he found a man far below the bells 
 with some sort of wooden gauntlets on his hands pounding away on a 
 key-board. But the proximity of the bells, the clanging of the keys 
 as they were struck by the wooden gloves, and the clatter of the 
 wires, made it impossible to hear the music ; yet those farther away 
 heard the most exquisite harmony as it floated out over the sea and 
 over the city, and many there were who paused in their work and lis- 
 tened to the chiming and were glad. As you have sat these many 
 years in the tower pounding away on the key-board, your ears per- 
 chance may not have caught a strain of the music you have been cre- 
 ating, but let me assure you, Mr. President of our Board of Trustees, 
 that those not so near as you to the rattle of the hammers and the 
 
clangor of the wires are to-day praising your name for the music that 
 has floated from the tower. They have been listening to the chiming 
 and been gladdened as they listened. 
 
 DEDICATION ODE. 
 By Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller. 
 
 Father of lights ! whose breath divine 
 Moved through creation's ancient night, 
 
 Each pulse of wakening life is thine, 
 All power and wisdom and delight. 
 
 All the deep beauty of the earth, 
 
 That charms the eye or thrills the heart, 
 
 In Thy wide being had its birth, 
 Is of Thy wondrous nature part. 
 
 Still, at Thy word, the silence breaks 
 And splendors of the dawn appear ; 
 
 Still, from Thy hand, the clay awakes 
 To shapes of beauty year by year. 
 
 And still, in nature's changeless law, 
 Thy voice we hear, Thy face we see, 
 
 And bonds of kindred upward draw 
 
 The souls that Thou hast made to Thee. 
 
 Not drifting atoms in the spheres 
 Of blind, insensate force are we. 
 
 But born of Thine eternal years. 
 
 And linked with all that yet shall be. 
 
 No thought of grandeur or of power, 
 No voice of prophet or of sage. 
 
 Dies with its own brief, passing hour, 
 But lives to teach in every age. 
 
 The deeds heroic souls have wrought 
 
 Shine down the centuries with their light, 
 
 And rich with all the years have brought. 
 We count their treasures ours to-night. 
 
IS 
 
 Not for one dim horizon's sweep 
 
 Rose on the world their kindling ray ; 
 
 Through widening skies their cycles keep 
 The constant planets' steadfast way. 
 
 Back to the morn of earlier days 
 We reach our reverent hands to find, 
 
 And crown with laurel of our praise, 
 The glorious Masters of the mind. 
 
 O bright immortals ! wearing still 
 The light upon your foreheads set, 
 
 Our hearts, with deep, responsive thrill, 
 Are vibrant to your music yet. 
 
 Down the blue vales of Hellas goes 
 Old Homer, singing to his Greeks ; 
 
 And where the Avon winds and flows, 
 
 The soul of Shakespeare lives and speaks. 
 
 Still, for all ages, Dante weaves 
 
 His dream of shores no foot hath crossed, 
 And Milton in his blindness grieves 
 
 For every race its Eden lost. 
 
 The marbles wrought to shapes divine 
 
 By the great sculptors' matchless powers, 
 In their unchanging beauty shine 
 To link their own bright day to ours. 
 
 Ours the proud story, graven deep 
 On rocks that front the desert tide, 
 
 Where the calm Sphinx her mystery keeps, 
 Unheeding how the centuries glide ; 
 
 And theirs, for whose heroic strife 
 No hand could stay the sinking sun, 
 
 Who gave the whole of love and life, 
 And died with all their fields unwon. 
 
 So speeds the long procession by, 
 
 So grows the roll, from year to year ; 
 
i6 
 
 So to the souls that cannot die, 
 
 New shrines we build, new temples rear. 
 
 On swelling dome and springing arch, 
 On clustered pillars, blossom-wrought, 
 
 We trace their grand, triumphal march. 
 And grave the beauty of their thought. 
 
 Yet, in our highest thought to-day, 
 Lord of all life ! to Thee we bow ; 
 
 Stars of our lesser world were they. 
 Sun of a thousand worlds art Thou ! 
 
 Make us with heavenly wisdom wise ; 
 
 Teach us in human powers to see 
 But wings by which our souls may rise. 
 
 To find their being's end in Thee. 
 
 ADDRESS BY CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS, LL.D., 
 President of Wisconsin University, 
 
 President Adams, on being introduced, spoke substantially as 
 follows : 
 Mr. President, Mr. Orrington Lunt, and Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 I heartily congratulate you on the arrival of this auspicious 
 day. It is a bright day without and a bright day within. Com- 
 ing from a University which knows what it is to have inadequate 
 accommodations for a library, and to long for new and larger accom- 
 modations, I speak not without knowledge that a new and adequate 
 library building for any university is one of the greatest treasures it 
 can possess. The library, in a large sense, may be called the head of 
 the institution. Certainly it bears that relation to the university as a 
 whole in all matters of material equipment. Nor indeed can the 
 library be called, in the strictest sense of the term, material equipment, 
 for therein are stored the evidences of all that has been accom- 
 plished in all the walks of knowledge. It is not possible for any 
 institution to do advanced work in any of the fields of investigation 
 without having the means at hand of knowing what has been done by 
 
17 
 
 those who have gone before. Every branch of knowledge is now 
 inclined to take a historical form. Every scientific man, if he is to be 
 sure of his ground, must know what scientific men before him have 
 accomplished. If we scrutinize the work of those who have done so 
 much for the advancement of science within the past generation, we 
 shall find that the extension of knowledge even along scientific lines 
 is a development from knowledge that has previously existed ; and 
 it is evident that there is no possible way of knowing what those 
 before have accomplished without vast accumulations of evidence 
 within the walls of our libraries. It was not altogether strange, there- 
 fore, although it was a very impressive fact, that when, after the recent 
 Franco-Prussian war, the Germans decided in accordance with what 
 they had done at Berlin and at Bonn, to celebrate their victory by the 
 establishment of a great university in the conquered city of Strasburg, 
 they should decide to appeal to the learned men in all parts of the 
 world for books with which to establish a great library, without which 
 they believed no university could appropriately be established. 
 Within a very short time more than two hundred thousand volumes 
 were brought together, and now within little more than twenty years 
 from the founding of the University, the university library of Stras- 
 burg contains about four hundred thousand volumes. 
 
 But great libraries in order to be useful must be accessible to 
 those who would become acquainted with their contents. The day has 
 gone by in which the library is a mere place in which to keep books. 
 The business of a library is to render books accessible, to enable the 
 investigator after truth to follow and to run down easily any and all 
 the information of which he is in search. In a university library all 
 such information should be at the finger ends of the librarian, and 
 should be made easy of access to every student. By such a building 
 as this, students may be said to be tempted into the pursuit of knowl- 
 edge. Though the acquisition of valuable knowledge can never be 
 made altogether easy, it is still possible to adorn the avenues of learn- 
 ing with such delightful associations and suggestions as to make the 
 search in every way agreeable. This is now felt to be a necessity as 
 it has never been felt before. Within the few years past a large num- 
 ber of new and commodious library buildings have been erected for 
 our colleges and universities. Kansas University has just completed 
 a large and beautiful building; the University of Minnesota is just 
 
i8 
 
 completing a very large structure, and the University of Wisconsin 
 will not be content until from some source adequate provision is made 
 for a similar structure. 
 
 There is another reason why I am particularly interested in the 
 opening of this library. I feel a kind of personal interest in the insti 
 tution owing to my former relations with many of those who have 
 had to do with the building up of the library here. In my childhood 
 days, far off among the hills of Vermont, Mr. Luther L. Greenleaf, 
 who made so valuable a contribution to your library, was my first 
 teacher. Several years later, soon after I began the teaching of his- 
 tory in the University of Michigan, one of my pupils was the present 
 honored head of this University ; and finally, besides having the 
 pleasure of teaching Professor Young at Michigan, and Professor 
 Stanclift at Cornell, I had in one of my classes at Ann Arbor, Mr. 
 Otis, to whose refined tastes you are indebted for the architecture of 
 this beautiful structure. So you see there are reasons why I should 
 feel quite at home in this building. I rejoice to meet so many of my 
 old friends and pupils here, and I congratulate them all on the com- 
 pletion of this noble work. I congratulate the people of Evanston 
 that so beautiful a building has been here erected. I congratulate 
 you, Mr. President, that you are now able to offer so commodious a 
 building for the uses of the Professors and students of the University; 
 and, finally, I congratulate you, Mr. Lunt, that you have found so 
 appropriate and so noble an opportunity for benefiting the students 
 of this University and through them for benefiting mankind. 
 
 After President Adams' address, on invitation of the chairman, 
 Hon. Horace G. Lunt, of Colorado Springs, who was formerly 
 librarian of the University, made brief remarks, chiefly of reminis- 
 cence. The exercises of the afternoon closed with the benediction, 
 pronounced by Rev. Dr. Fisk, of Chicago. An opportunity was then 
 given the audience to inspect the library building. 
 
19 
 
 In the evening, at the First Methodist Episcopal Church, a large 
 audience was assembled to hear the address of Mr. Winsor. The 
 exercises were as follows: — 
 
 ORGAN VOLUNTARY— Professor P. C. Lutkin. 
 
 INVOCATION — Rev. Dr. Miner Raymond. 
 
 CHORUS — " The Lord is Great," (Rhigini,) 
 
 Choir of St. James' Church, Chicago. 
 
 ADDRESS — " T/ie Development of the Library!^ 
 
 Justin Winsor, LL.D., Librarian of Harvard University. 
 
 CHORUS — "/^a/W«y«A Chorus," (Handel,) 
 Choir of St. James' Church. 
 
 benediction. 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIBRARY. 
 
 Address by Justin Winsor, LL.D., 
 librarian of harvard university. 
 
 It is nearly two centuries and a quarter since a tiny college of 
 the wilderness floated along your water-front. It carried two teachers. 
 One, a black-robed priest, had passed a novitiate in Latin and Greek, 
 and had drunk inspiration from the fountain of the Fathers. His 
 matured life had been passed in the woods, a student of its wild deni- 
 zens. He had sought the mysteries of their varied tongues till he 
 could embalm in native cadences the great truths of his religion. His 
 faith was symbolized in the crucifix dangling from his neck. Within 
 the folds of his cassock rested the well-thumbed manual of his hourly 
 devotion, — the be-all and end-all of his saintly life, the little library 
 of this pristine university. 
 
 His companion was a vigorous spirit, equally adept in driving a 
 bargain for pelts with the savage and in discerning the points of the 
 compass in a lichened tree-bole. He could tell what to expect in the 
 up-country by scanning the river which came from it. His percep- 
 tions could place the great divides which turned the river channels to 
 
20 
 
 one ocean or the other. The outward aspects of nature were to him 
 what supreme truths and human aspirations were to the priest. 
 
 Thus this little primitive college, borne on the littoral current 
 which sweeps to the great southern bend of your life-giving lake, 
 fitly prefigures the counter resources in mind and matter, which form 
 the bewildering diversity of our modern, encompassing education. 
 In the folds of our devotion to all that is helpful in the emanation of 
 man's intellect, and beneath the symbol of our faith, we lay nearest 
 our heart the wealth of our libraries, just as the devoted Marquette 
 enfolded the spiritual manual upon his palpitating breast. In the 
 lessons of our laboratories we find the prescriptions of natural law, just 
 as Joliet found them in the air, the water, and the sky. 
 
 Two centuries and a quarter of struggling and vitalizing growth 
 has done this for us and little more. Education means with us as it 
 did to those pioneers, a preparation to subdue the earth, and to drink 
 the libations poured by a bountiful past. From the breviary of the 
 missionary to the possibilities of our modern libraries is a reach only 
 equalled by the passage from the simple instruction of those lowly 
 teachers to the complex variety of the new learning. 
 
 There are few more interesting problems to the student of this 
 new learning than the part which libraries are playing in its develop- 
 ment. There are two necessary concomitants of a large collection of 
 books. These are a bibliographical apparatus and a growth of special 
 departments. 
 
 Without the aid of bibliographical studies no large library can be 
 well formed, and no such collection can be properly handled. 
 
 No library but those whose distinction is their size, can attract 
 much attention, unless it becomes exceptional in some directions. 
 
 Bibliography and specialism are also the two readiest props 
 of scholarship, and nowhere more than with us ; and this is particu- 
 larly true of bibliography. The learned of the old world look with 
 some surprise on the recent advances in this respect which have been 
 made in this country. We have seen and are seeing our account in 
 it. Such studies have enabled us to outgrow the reproach, which 
 fifty years ago and more was a common one, that nowhere in this 
 country could one verify the first class investigations carried on by 
 European scholars. The late George Livermore, in 1850, emphasized 
 the stigma by saying — and he spoke the truth — that so cardinal a 
 
21 
 
 little book in the creation of the Yankee character as The New 
 Englatid Primer could nowhere in this country be historically con- 
 sidered, because of the lack of books necessary to elucidate the 
 allusions in it. Mr. Justice Story, speaking under the shadow of the 
 Harvard library, said the same thing of Gibbon's great history. If 
 this was more a reproach then than now, it should be remembered, 
 that the first duty of a new country is to establish a good average of 
 education, and that the creation of signal instances of the ripest 
 scholarship comes later. A country like ours, receiving a constant 
 influx of ill-educated aliens, has a more conspicuous duty to the state 
 in making good citizens of them, than in creating pure scholarship. 
 Wealth creating a leisured class, the patrons and purveyors of learn- 
 ing, has only come to us in a conspicuous way since our civil war, 
 and it has brought with it the meed of scholarship. 
 
 It by no means follows that the creation of a large body of 
 educated people is the sole source of remarkable scholarship. The 
 scholar may easily appear of his own option ; but he is buttressed in a 
 community that respects him. I met a few years ago, one of the best 
 students of our constitutional history writing his book in a society 
 that offered him no encouragement and was destitute of libraries. 
 There was something pathetic in his joy for an hour's intercourse 
 with one who could give him a sympathetic response. Such a 
 student, buying his own books and hampered in the selection of them, 
 contrasted with one familiar with the resources of a well-equipped 
 public library, may mean two things. It may signify a debasement 
 of the intellectual vantage ground, so as to affect scholarship ; or 
 what is occasionally the case, it may put the scholarly mind on 
 its mettle, and nourish its best endeavors. But such isolation from 
 books is never a safe experiment, and never a successful test of 
 mental endeavor in more than a few introspective studies. 
 
 The amassment of large private libraries is no longer a necessity 
 of scholarship. The student is more and more learning to depend on 
 large collections of books which the public fosters. There has been 
 in the older communities a decided check of late years to the forma- 
 tion of private collections. I am told by law publishers at the East, 
 that it is the western lawyer who buys books, while the eastern 
 advocate depends on the social law-libraries. 
 
 It is my observation that with classes four or five times as large 
 
22 
 
 as they were in my day at Harvard, the number of young men 
 among the students laying the foundation of their own collection of 
 books is fewer now than then. It is notorious that to-day in England 
 the collecting of books by the educated and leisured classes has gone 
 by. If a man is found forming a library, he is a banker or a brewer 
 come to the financial front who thinks it a passport to social distinc- 
 tion. Earl Spencer told me a few years ago that he never added a 
 book to the famous library then at Althorpe, and as I looked it 
 through, I could well believe there had not a book been put in it for 
 a half century. I have looked at some of the best libraries in 
 English country houses, and I have found but one or two, notably that 
 of the Duke of Westminster, which indicated that the best current 
 literature as distinct from bibliographical fads, was contributing to 
 their growth. The average English gentleman, with the training of 
 Oxford and Cambridge, is content to depend on a weekly box from 
 Mudie. Twenty years ago, the London publisher, Pickering, said 
 that he could not count on selling more than two hundred and fifty 
 copies of a good, new book ; and Quaritch to-day says he could not 
 live, except for his American orders. 
 
 Meanwhile the British Museum is printing sixty thousand titles a 
 year of its current accessions. Leaving out of account the mass of 
 books in foreign tongues, it was recently held by a competent judge 
 that the British Museum did not have more than half (or at most 
 three-fifths) of the books in English which have been printed. It is 
 not then too much to say that the best library of English-speaking 
 peoples is more or less of a makeshift. Mr. BuUen, the late Keeper 
 of the Printed Books in that library, recognized this when he 
 testified before the Society of Arts, that on few or no subjects to 
 be investigated, could the British Museum afford the scholar half\.\\e. 
 necessary books. The late Winter Jones, for many years its principal 
 librarian, told me once that not one thorough student in ten could 
 find there all he wanted ; and yet the British Museum is said to 
 contain not much short of two million volumes, and is possibly 
 exceeded only by the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. I have learned 
 to distrust comparative library statistics ; but we cannot certainly on 
 American soil point to any collection one-third as large. 
 
 The growth of American libraries, however, has been rapid, and 
 far beyond expectation. Five and thirty years ago, when the Boston 
 
2J 
 
 Public Library was finally organized, it was calculated that a building 
 capable of holding two hundred thousand volumes would suffice for a 
 century. In less than twenty years, it fell to my lot (being then in 
 charge of that institution), to double its capacity, and now, in less 
 than forty years, or much less than half the allotted time, it has been 
 found necessary to build a building of eight or ten times the capacity 
 of the old one. Less than a score of years ago the library of 
 Harvard College was given an addition to its building to double its 
 shelf-room. To-day it has to store away in boxes its superfluous 
 books. Not long ago I was directed by the President of the 
 University to plan a new building with everything commensurate for 
 a college of five thousand students ; and the result was a scale of 
 structure which would give ample table room to six hundred readers at 
 the same moment and would hold a million and a half of volumes 
 with a prospective capacity of three millions — a great hive, the queen 
 bee of which is a single folio come down to us through more than two 
 centuries and a half, the sole relic of the library of John Harvard. 
 
 Twenty years ago Mr. Spofford reckoned that the library of 
 Congress would reach half a million of volumes at the present time. 
 It more than reached it in eight years. It was but the other day that 
 the final stone was laid on the great building at Washington destined 
 to hold the principal American library. The structure is claimed to 
 have a capacity of at least five or six millions of volumes ; but I 
 suspect that with modern devices for compact stowage, its capability 
 as a storehouse may be carried much beyond these figures. Perhaps 
 it can be made to reach an extent something like five times the size 
 of any existing collection of books, or just about equal to what a 
 library must be if it is to contain every book that has been printed. 
 
 If no great library has to-day more than a quarter or a fifth of 
 the vast product of the press during these four and a half centuries 
 since Gutenberg, is there a chance that in this new world we can hope 
 to bring from their obscurity all that is not irrecoverably lost of these 
 other millions of volumes ? The abyss of ages has doubtless swal- 
 lowed some part of this literature never to give it up, but it is probable 
 that the greater part of it is scattered in many libraries or in obscure 
 household repositories and only needs to be brought together. 
 
 American competition in the European bookmarts, which has 
 done so much in fifty years not only to enhance prices, but to bring 
 
24 
 
 books from their hiding places, may do something to recover for us 
 this vast reserve of literature. The great area of our national library 
 building, however, is doubtless to be filled chiefly by the teeming 
 products of the press in the future. Something like forty thousand 
 or fifty thousand volumes of all kinds a year pass into the library of 
 Congress under the American copyright law alone. 
 
 These vast figures make the problems which the coming librarians 
 are to confront greatly interesting. There was a time when English- 
 men thought the Bodleian contained every book worth having. Fifty 
 years ago Panizzi came to the British Museum, fresh from an 
 acquaintance with what the great continental collections preserved. 
 He drew up a list of that library's deficiencies and British insularity 
 stood aghast at the revelation. The assiduity of Jones, Bond, 
 Thompson, BuUen, and Garnett has ever since been doing much to 
 remedy the defect. 
 
 These future problems, if great and in some ways difficult, are 
 far from being appalling. Great occasions produce great resources, 
 and historical crises raise up adequate men. I see no reason to 
 believe that learning and education will not be in the future more 
 deftly as well as more exhaustively served, in an administrative sense, 
 with these enormous segregations of books than they are to-day with 
 our far smaller collections. I see no reason to believe that libraries 
 can outgrow our ability to handle them. 
 
 We have not yet reached the capabilities of cataloguing and 
 indexing, and have got to use more frequently the printed title, not 
 altogether for its legibility but for its compactness. When the British 
 Museum authorities saw that their prospective nine thousand huge 
 volumes of its MS. catalogue were going to take for their convenient 
 display a space three times the size of its own reading room, they 
 were forced into print. It was cheaper than building a new structure. 
 We may be sure also that we have not begun in mechanical devices 
 to take advantage of all that the Edisons have yet done, or may do, 
 to find appliances to diminish labor and expedite service. Twenty 
 years ago I outlined an automatic device for the delivery of books ; 
 and its principles have been readapted in a moving endless chain, 
 which is to render rapid the distribution of books in the new library 
 at Washington. 
 
 I look to the development in such directions that will make the 
 
25 
 
 library of the twentieth century, with a capacity and demand quadru- 
 pled over those of to-day, more easily administered in the delivery of 
 books and more thoroughly subordinated to intellectual requirements 
 in their catalogues, than any small library is to-day. Such develop- 
 ments will come in time. To Franklin the world owed, one hundred 
 years ago, a step in university extension, when he founded the Phila- 
 delphia library, more imposing than any that is making to-day. 
 When he tamed the lightning, we may yet see what he rendered 
 possible through electricity for library administration. 
 
 Nearly a score of years ago I was present in a small circle of 
 his friends when Graham Bell made a rude instrument, in the rooms 
 of the American Academy in Boston, give out " Home, Sweet Home," 
 as played on a distant piano. A year or two later, after I was one of 
 the first to put the telephone to practical use in the Boston Public 
 Library, I recounted its possible future to a dinner party at Althorpe. 
 The incredulous English thought my presumptuous fancies but the 
 foolish rampage of an irrepressible Yankee. We know what has 
 come of it. 
 
 We don't know what will yet come of the phonograph. Edison's 
 first instrument was sent to Boston to be shown to some gentlemen 
 before its character had been made known. I never expect again to 
 see quite such awe on human faces as when Gray's Elegy was repeated 
 by an insensate box to a company of unsuspecting listeners. I look to 
 see its marvellous capabilities yet utilized in the service of the librarian. 
 
 The scientists tell us that palpitations once put upon the air 
 never die ; and that had we instruments delicate enough to register 
 them we might yet hear the footfalls of Plato walking in the Academy; 
 the denunciations of Brutus on the rostrum ; the prayer of Columbus 
 at San Salvador ; the periods of Garrick at Drury Lane ; the calm 
 judgments of Washington in the Federal convention. Perhaps we 
 might listen more attentively yet to the splash of the paddle of Mar- 
 quette and Joliet in that infant college, wandering along these neigh- 
 boring shores. We must wait many developments of the way in 
 which science is to walk lock-stepped with the ardent librarian. 
 
 This library of the future is doubtless to be very costly, and we 
 have got to compare the game and the candle. The British Museum 
 is to spend half a million dollars in printing its three million titles. 
 A recently erected library building is lighted at an annual expense 
 
26 
 
 of gi 5,000. Whether the necessity of such expense is wise may be a 
 question. Nevertheless a great library is an expensive necessity, and 
 it is far from easy for the man of affairs to comprehend it. The 
 processes of bulking, which reduce averages of expense in commer- 
 cial measures, work quite otherwise in the cost of maintaining libra- 
 ries. I have known a good many instances of men, wise in making 
 money, foolish in making libraries. A certain rich man founded a 
 college and selected a librarian. This officer proposed to buy a 
 bibliographical apparatus, to aid him in selecting a library. " No," 
 said Croesus, " I don't know anything about bibliography. Buy 
 books as you happen to want them 1 " 
 
 A man of wide experience in affairs consulted me about a trust for 
 a library in a metropolitan city. He had no doubt that the money 
 would enable him to lead the world in libraries, and that the start of 
 the great Paris library with its two million and more of books was no 
 discouragement. He would not only equal the old libraries in books, 
 but he would have their MSS. copied, and would even print such as 
 no publisher would touch. When I examined the balance sheet of 
 the trust, I found that after he had built his building, he could not 
 compete for income, with a third-class institution, as libraries go. 
 
 A distinguished advocate of the chief bar of the United States in 
 attacking the same trust in behalf of the heir-at-law, is said to have 
 claimed that such an endowment as the trustees held, was out of all 
 proportion to the needs of a library, and it would soon find that there 
 were no books left to buy. Learned as this counsel was, he never 
 suspected that there were still five or six millions of books which the 
 biggest libraries had never yet succeeded in buying. 
 
 A distinguished Anglo-American, who spread his benefactions on 
 two continents, employed an agent to gather a library for his 
 native town. He restricted him to an average cost per volume of one 
 dollar and no more. I remember the distress of this agent when he 
 told me of the bushel of cheap books he had to buy in order to give 
 him the chance of buying a few more costly and indispensable books 
 of reference, and still keep his average at a dollar. It is certainly 
 one thing to bank for governments wisely, and quite another to cater 
 with sagacity to the intellectual wants of your native village. 
 
 But the millionaire has his mission, if he is not always wise in it, 
 for he must be depended upon to do what learning will not do. 
 
2; 
 
 From a million to two millions of dollars, and more, have been 
 privately bestowed on American communities in the endowing of 
 libraries, in six or eight different instances within a score of years. We 
 can have nothing in this country like the sequestrations which have so 
 conspicuously augmented some of the chief libraries of Europe, but of 
 late we have begun to experience the gravitation of private collections 
 of special interest toward our public libraries. It was a saying of 
 Thomas Watt, the bibliographer, that the excuse for the existence of 
 private collections, is that they may eventually be engulfed in public 
 ones. We have seen scholarship better equipped among us for what 
 Mr. Lenox studiously preserved for us ; for what the Barton collec- 
 tion has done for Shakespearian studies in Boston ; for what the White 
 collection has done for students of the French Revolution and the 
 Reformation at Cornell ; for the Dante collections at Cambridge and 
 at Ithaca ; the garnering of Von Mohl and Bluntschli at Yale and at 
 Johns Hopkins ; the Marsh collection at Burlington ; the geological 
 and geographical library of Professor Whitney at Harvard; "and the 
 Spanish collection of George Ticknor at the public library of Boston, 
 — not to name others. It is in Americana however that our libraries 
 can naturally best compare with those of the old world. The Ebeling, 
 Warden, Bancroft, and Force collections have put all students of 
 American history under obligations. They have seen with regret the 
 Prescott, Brinley, Barlow, Field, and Murphy collections scattered 
 under the hammer, and cherish the hope that the Carter-Brown 
 and Charles Deane collections may yet be possessed by the public. 
 
 The world has few more precious possessions than the books 
 of a scholar, tinged with his mental contact. I remember seeing once 
 in the London Library in St. James' Square, a closet full of books, 
 which had been lent to Carlyle, and carefully preserved, because 
 when he read them he had entered his pungent exclamations and 
 pithy comments on their margins. In recognition of this audacious 
 habit it had been the policy of the librarian to lend to Carlyle every 
 new book which he thought would interest him, because he was sure 
 to scatter his disdain on its blank spaces. What these marginalia 
 were, we can imagine if we glance at the books streaked with 
 his belligerent spirit, and shown in the collection used in writing 
 his Cromwell and Frederic, which he bequeathed to the Harvard 
 Library. 
 
28 
 
 The most significant development of the college library during 
 the last score of years is that which has worked parallel with seminary 
 methods, and which has made laboratories out of collections of 
 books. The elective system and the dispelling of rote-learning have 
 reacted on the library, and the library has influenced them. 
 
 I may be in error, but I venture to say that this close mating of 
 library uses with college work, first took shape in Harvard College 
 library, not twenty years ago. When the process of closely applying 
 particular books to help instruction was then proposed, it was not 
 received with much favor, and most of the teachers discredited the 
 innovation. The plan was a simple one. The teacher was to name to 
 the librarian the books to which in his lectures he was to refer, and 
 these taken from their places in the general library were to be made 
 accessible to the students in a given alcove. My recollection is that 
 not more than a score or two of books were thus designated in the 
 beginning by two or three instructors. It took a year or two to make 
 a real start ; but to-day not a teacher, of the two or three hundred at 
 work in the college, but is eager for this chance to promote his pupils' 
 study. So instead of two or three dozen books, we count now on 
 the shelves seven or eight thousand volumes, particularly applicable 
 to the instruction. With allied reference books, there are twenty-five 
 to thirty thousand volumes open to the immediate contact of the 
 interested student. The system has gone a step farther in the crea- 
 tion of class-room libraries, close at hand in the hours of instruction, 
 and ten or a dozen of these supplemental collections, show from a few 
 score to a few thousand volumes each. All this has conduced to an 
 enormous increase in the use of the books, and our statistics reveal 
 that a very small proportion of the students are not frequenters of 
 the library. 
 
 Nor is this all which is, in these latter days, done to facilitate 
 the use of the books. Systematic instruction in bibliographical 
 research keeps in the van of every subject a cloud of skirmishers, who 
 bring in title after title for the consideration of the library authori- 
 ties. Thus the whole system becomes a practical endowment of 
 research, and the library becomes a central agency in college work. 
 It "teaches the teachers," as President Eliot has said of it. 
 
 There is at this point one pertinent question: — With this import- 
 ance in the broad system of instruction, does the library always get its 
 
29 
 
 due share of the money resources of our colleges ? Are not too often 
 the advantages of its improvement weighed against those of a new 
 chair ? If another institution creates a professorship of Tamil, cannot 
 the library wait till we create otir chair of Tamil ? Do the authorities 
 always consider that every diminution of the library's essential 
 allowance is simply a check upon the proficiency of existitig chairs ? 
 
 Is it too much to say that the library is the very core of the 
 University? I once said, "The library should be to the college much 
 what the dining-room is to the home — the place to invigorate the 
 system under cheerful conditions with a generous fare and good 
 digestion." There cannot be too much care bestowed in making this 
 place of intellectual sustenance attractive. Grateful appearances 
 beget grateful humors. 
 
 The fact is a librarian needs every advantage he can possibly 
 command, if he is going to make his library of the utmost profit. 
 He must be himself a standing invitation to the library's hospitality. 
 I remember one day shortly after I took charge of the library at 
 Cambridge, seeing an old man, bearing a head that no one could 
 forget, with its black, cavernous eyes and white, shaggy locks — 
 the most picturesque character that we have ever had in our Harvard 
 faculty — I remember seeing this old man climbing clumsily up a 
 steep stair to a cock-loft. I asked where he was going, and was told 
 that in the crowded state of the library, the collection of books in 
 modern Greek, being used by no one else, had been placed in this 
 upper loft and that it was the old man's habit to go there and seek 
 quiet among the books. Shortly after I inspected the collection and 
 found it a motley assemblage of volumes in bad binding, or in none. 
 I ordered them to be tidily bound, and placed in a fitting room. 
 Thereafter Professor Sophocles was my friend. 
 
 " I want to tell you a story," said he to me one day, in that deep, 
 sonorous tone, which gave his talk so much Rembrandtish character. 
 " My father," he went on, " wished to be chosen the chief man of the 
 village where he lived in Greece. There was another man who had 
 the same wish. One night there came to my father's house two men, 
 scowling and saying nothing. They had knives in their girdles. 
 ' How much did my rival promise to pay you if you killed me ? ' 
 asked my father. They told him. ' Humph ! ' he replied, ' I will 
 pay you twice as much to kill him ! ' They left on a new errand." 
 
30 
 
 This was the way my venerable friend had of making a ghoulish 
 tale serve for a bit of advice. If an inquirer comes to the librarian to 
 lay him bare to his knife, send him away with twice the reward. 
 Compound if you can the interest on the visitor's investment. 
 
 A librarian often wonders that so many students can go through 
 a four years' course without really becoming proficients in the use of 
 books ; without learning that it is not always the reading of books 
 that most enriches ; but the skillful glancing at them. We do not 
 want to go a journey with a stallion to find if he can throw his feet in 
 a two-twenty gait. We must jockey in books. Make them show 
 their paces over a half-hour course. Leave the plodding reader to be 
 lost in a bewilderment of sentences. 
 
 It is a librarian's luxury when a man comes to him who knows 
 how to master a book and to dominate a library. If our colleges 
 would pay more attention to the methods by which a subject is 
 deftly attacked and would teach the true use of encyclopaedic and 
 bibliographical helps, they would do much to make the library more 
 serviceable. 
 
 The time lost in floundering among books would fringe the 
 dreariest existence with many graceful amplitudes of learning, if men 
 were taught to investigate as they are taught to swim. Floundering 
 is not study. Then there is the waste of time and energy in rediscov- 
 ering what is already known. The wise student looks for the blazed 
 pathways of those who have gone before him. 
 
 A university scope in instruction, election in studies, and the 
 pursuit of special aims, are certainly doing much to make us produce 
 creditable scholars and enlarge the bounds of knowledge ; but I trust 
 that we may never cease to value the generous and all-round training 
 of the small college. It is of inestimable value to us Americans that 
 we have these small colleges, and I always feel a pang when one of 
 them puts on university airs. It is the function of such colleges and 
 their libraries to make educated gentlemen, to whom no knowledge is 
 superfluous, who respond to every intellectual sympathy, and who 
 make of social intercourse a well-spring of learned delights. It is the 
 function of the universities to enlarge the bounds of knowledge, 
 to make one acquirement the stepping-stone to another, to lay tribute 
 upon nature and probe the obscurities of learning. Heaven defend 
 that they should not make gentlemen and scholars ; but the amenities 
 
31 
 
 of our social existence are much more dependent on cultured gentle- 
 men whose education does not aspire to the deeper scholarship. 
 
 I know of a university town where the atmosphere is saturated 
 with the damps of specialisms. One wonders jf Sanskrit, and hypnot- 
 ism, and electro-dynamics exist for the world's sake, or the world 
 exists for them. 
 
 It is the fashion of this community to maintain dinner clubs 
 among its professors, and once a fortnight these clubs listen to 
 an essay on the particular specialty of their host. He gives us the 
 latest intelligence in his little world. Somebody has discovered an 
 abnormal vein in a butterfly's wing. Another puts his lens on a 
 literary critic and makes him hateful. A third tells us how a Roman 
 folded his napkin. 
 
 It is a rule of these clubs that there should be no two members 
 devoted to like studies, and when the essay is read, each of these 
 specialists trains his own little Gatling gun upon the poor essayist. 
 The show is sometimes brilliant ; sometimes it wearies a trifle. The 
 scintillations sometimes light up unwonted depths, and I go home 
 in a state of amazement at the multiplicity of the mind's 
 angles. Intellectual . life certainly gets new significance as one 
 vantage ground after another is brought into use in the contempla- 
 tion of a topic. 
 
 I go again to a table full of gentlemen who make no profession 
 to advanced learning. I have on my right a banker who has just 
 read a novel, in which he finds a misconception of a curb-stone opera- 
 tor. Some one across speaks of an horticultural exhibition and my 
 friend tells the story of the introduction of the Chrysanthemum from 
 Japan, and is led to speak of Parkman's success in the hybridizing of 
 lilies. My left hand neighbor says he has been at Bellemead and 
 ridden behind Iroquois. My Wall street friend knows the pedigree 
 of Iroquois and tells me who his grandsire was. Our host is reminded 
 of a celebrated horse of Colonial days, which carried General John 
 Winslow on some famous ride. My moneyed neighbor immediately 
 fills out the story of the Acadians, and traces back the tale of the 
 Cajeans in Louisiana. " My friend," said I turning to him, " what 
 don't you know about." "Oh, I graduated at a little college in the 
 New England hills, where we turn out educated gentlemen who 
 know a little of everything and not a great deal of anything, who 
 
32 
 
 can talk with a bandit or a Sioux and make him believe he is talking 
 with a brother." 
 
 These little dinner-table experiences illustrate what is the differ- 
 ence between the educated gentleman and the special scholar. Is 
 not one as necessary to our ripest civilization as the other ? 
 
 I have said nothing of the relations of the college and books to 
 the most momentous problem of our day. Squirarchy and birth, which 
 ruled our nation once, have given place to a new order. Political 
 economy in its sociological aspects has become a study of contem- 
 porary manifestations. It is no longer the geologist alone who takes 
 his pupils afield. The professor of social economics finds his "strata " 
 in graded benefactions, and his "faults" in broken lives. We cry 
 much about education as the safety-valve in this mighty change, and 
 say that university extension is a saving grace. Along with it all, has 
 come the wonderful growth of our free-library system. In Massa- 
 chusetts the state stands ready to help any town to have its library, 
 and few there are without them. All this cannot, I think, mean that 
 books and education are losing their hold on the people. 
 
 We are sometimes alarmed at the coming among us of vast 
 hordes of aliens. We should not forget that in this country we have 
 passed through just such disturbing conditions before, when our life 
 was not equally well prepared to deal with the phenomena. Study 
 the history of that huge wave of Americanization which, in the last 
 century and in the early part of this, broke like a sea against the 
 Appalachians, swept through their gaps and moved athwart the great 
 valley of the Mississippi, broke again upon the Rockies and toppled 
 down the Pacific slope. How much of this surging was of alien 
 blood. Look at the names on the street-signs of every considerable 
 town which that wave has left stranded in its passage. I doubt if, as 
 our frontiers moved west, there were fewer aliens in proportion than 
 we find among us to-day. 
 
 I happen myself to come of the ancientest of our New England 
 stock. I can hold my grandchild on my knee and tell it of its great- 
 grandfather, and of his father and grandfather — six generations that I 
 have known — as many as would carry some old persons, still living, 
 back to Plymouth Rock; and yet may I not well afford to welcome the 
 alien who landed yesterday at Castle Garden ? Of a family nurtured 
 on the sea, I have come to nourish my existence on books. Is it 
 
33 
 
 strange that I believe the laborer of to-day will be the progenitor of 
 future bookmen ? 
 
 The students of Harvard College are seen now-a-days in the 
 manual training school. The president of a Southern university when 
 he took me into the workshops of his institution said to me: "We 
 found out in the civil war what an advantage to you of the North 
 was the spread of industrial practices among your people ; and we don't 
 propose to forget it." If it was an advantage in helping to save the 
 Union, can it be otherwise in helping to carry our life to higher 
 results ? 
 
 After Mr. Winsor's address, the "Hallelujah Chorus" was sung: 
 the exercises were then closed with the benediction, pronounced by 
 Rev. Dr. Raymond. 
 
 Of THX 
 
 [TJIITER! 
 
FivorMiwe s tor n iM^t^S^ i Ur 
 
 
 Exercises 
 
 at the 
 
 Z733 
 
 opening. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 
 ^^H 
 
 
 ^^^^t 
 
 
 ^^^^^1 
 
 tIBRARY