2,300 books were loaned to the schools, inclusive of renewals.

The Superintendent of Schools and the teachers are enthusiastic in their opinion as to the amount of good accomplished, and of the interest in intelligent study and reading awakened. Though entailing some extra care and responsibility upon the teachers, the books were found to so quicken the minds of the children, and create a desire to read them, that, when used as a reward for good lessons or good conduct, they served as powerful aids in the discipline of the schools.

Through their diffusion, too, among families living at a distance from the library, and so

unacquainted with its treasures, the work is having a very marked influence; and this fact is indicated in a measure by an increase of our delivery during the first six months of this year of nearly 4,000 over the first six months of last year. Without doubt a large share of this increase is owing to a better knowledge of and interest in the library, which has been the result of the work of the library with the schools.1

1 [Miss James writes: "In 1885, our per cent. of fiction was 67.4; the first six months of this year it was 64.7; and in March went down to 62.7; all of which shows that the increased circulation was owing to a demand for solid reading and study."— ED.]

I. OF HOBBIES IN GENERAL.

classifying the natural history of the subject my purpose will be answered by making three genera of the class "Imagination."

I. The Chimera. A fabulous animal; unreal, the creature of a disordered imagination; type of superstition and ignorance.

2. The Hobby. Realistic; utilitarian; the offspring of sanity and reason; objective; type of naturalness and reality.

3. The Ideal. The standard of perfection. It goes beyond nature, yet is modelled upon it. It is broad as the intelligence, high as the inspiration, vast and deep as the scope of the human mind. It recognizes the lowest of created things as a type perfect in itself; it embraces all of nature and humanity, and soars above the universe to fold its wings at the footstool of that Deity which is above its comprehension, and which it recognizes but through its faith.

How plain the evolution!

Out of fable into faith; out of conjecture into conviction; out of unreality into reason; through chimera to crotchet; through crotchet to hobby; through hobby to inspiration; through inspiration to Truth, the essence of the Divine.

Its earliest use in English was derived from the O.F. "hobe," and meant a small, strongwinged falcon, trained to fly at pigeons and partridges; and as hawks, like dogs and horses, were general pets in the days of falconry, and hawking was the favorite pastime, it is quite evident how the word "hobby" got its present meaning, — the pursuit of an object for amusement and pleasure. Bartlett adds, "Hobby-horse is a corruption of hobbyhause' (hawk-tossing), or throwing off the hawk from the wrist. Hobby-horse is applied to a little pet horse by the same natural transposition as a 'mews' for hawks is now a stable for horses."

The later, and better known, use of the word is also from the O.F. "hobin," a little, ambling horse. What an innocent and pleasing idea it conveys! Little, it should be harm

not run away with us; but a horse, and, if we ride it, sure to carry us somewhere.

Again: little- and not to be confounded with the heavy draft-horse of Perseverance; ambling - and does not vie with the thoroughbred racer of Energy, or the pawing war-horse of Enthusiasm; and, still, a useful little fellow, mildly invigorating when gently urged, carrying us over a good deal of ground in a quiet way; but, alas! too susceptible of being ridden to death if exercised immoderately; prone to pitch one off; and even capable of turning the tables and riding its master if indulged too far.

James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, in my presence, a short time ago, was bewailing his ill-luck with horses and his fear of them. I verily believe," he said, "if I were to get a-straddle of a saw-horse the pesky thing would rear up and kick my brains out." Some people's hobbies are not unlike "Jim's" sawhorse.

Hobbies, I apprehend, are self-imposed tasks taken up for pleasure, in contradistinction to those pursued only for profit; and a man's character is probably better revealed in his hobby than in anything else. He must possess both heart and imagination to have one; and a very unpleasant and dangerous neighbor he would be without these: that is, without tastes, without inclinations, without likes.

How

Hobbies are begun in childhood. many boys and girls have started with a mania for collecting postage-stamps and crazy-quilt scraps, and have carried out their destiny in after-life by giving fabulous prices for cracked cups and saucers, peach-blow vases, bric-a-brac, and “articles of bigotry and virtue,” as Mrs. Malaprop calls them!

How often people's hobbies endear them to us, in giving a touch of eccentricity to their character, and revealing many an amiable and lovable trait!

Who of us does not know some one with a hobby for making everybody happy, one of those angels of light whose sole aim seems to be to infuse comfort, and help, and purity into the lives of others? God bless and multiply all such! The world is sweeter and better and

brighter for their presence in it, and heaven a gainer at their departure.

There are some hobby-riders, of course, from whom the instinct of self-preservation prompts us to fly, the bores. It is not necessary to enumerate them all; in fact it would be impossible. The musical prodigy, the amateur painter, the family genealogist, the croaker with a pet grievance or an illusionary disease, the critic who would lose his reputation if he praised anything; the nil admirari of any kind; that very American animal, you know, the monoanglo-maniac; the political economist who knows the country is going to the dogs, the gushing parent with a "smart" child, that despicable wretch the punster, the new convert to homœopathy, the teetotal crusader, the antitobacconist, the doctrinal and dogmatic hobbyist, who has not suffered from some aggravated type of most of these afflictions, besides others "too numerous to mention?"

And then the hobbyists with but one idea, who delude themselves that they are leading in the grand race of life, and do not realize that their steeds are tethered to a single stake by a single rope, and are but trampling down the grass in a ring, and winding themselves up in an ever-narrowing range till they come to a sudden stop only to choke to death, or to unwind themselves again. Of this type was the old professor in a German university. He had filled the chair of Greek for over sixty years; and when he was dying he called to his bedside his son, himself a grandfather. With his last breath he whispered: "My son, you will succeed me as professor of Greek. Be warned by my example, and do not attempt to do too much. I started in my work with the ambition to master the whole of the Infinitive mode of the Greek verb. Had I but confined myself to the Aorist tense what might I not have accomplished!" And then he did what he should have done sixty years before — he died.

There is but one suggestion I would make regarding these hobby-riders. Shut them in a dark room, lock the door, and await with faith the natural evolution, the survival of the fittest (or fightest).

But to return. Hobbies are born of desire,

cradled in affection, nurtured by impulse, and develop into achievement.

They are born of desire, for their very existence implies an aim, an end to be sought, an incentive to move to action.

They are cradled in affection, for, of necessity, they appeal and endear themselves to the natural inclinations of the mind whose offspring they are.

They are nurtured in impulse, for they receive their sustenance from the fount of the parent will.

Lastly, they develop into result in the additional knowledge, the mental discipline, and the breadth attained in their pursuit; and, let us hope, in the incidental pleasure and help they may have been to others. Here we have aim, love, motive, achievement. What more?

How often we hear it said, "As to that, consult Mr. X.,—it is his hobby;" and if Mr. X. is a man of sense and judgment we are willing to accept his dictum.

Since librarians are always people of sense and judgment it follows that they should be successful hobbyists; and this leads me to treat

I hold it true that the librarian, if any man, is, in his fulness, the apostle of self-culture. No man, neither the preacher nor the teacher, and they should be synonymous, — has broader opportunity for making his work far-reaching and diverse. The high and low, the rich and poor, senility, maturity, abdolescence and juvenility, wisdom and folly, dignity and impudence, the scholar, the specialist, the dilletante, the tyro, the crank, -all come ambling along to him in never-ending, ever-changing variety. All need help; all must have it. With each we mount his hobby and ride apace, to set him on his way. A pleasant task it often is, and loath we are to dismount and watch our late fellow pursuing his way beyond our ken. But, with a sigh and a "God speed you," back we turn, to greet, perchance, some sorry wight with hobbyhorse ungirthed and saddle all awry. Buckling and tightening this and arranging that, we give him a lift to his saddle, put bridle in his hand, and, with a word of help and encour

agement, away he goes, perhaps to fall again, perhaps to reach his goal.

Verily, these are some of the compensations in the librarian's work!

Heigho! what should we do if others had no hobbies; and, above all, if we had none ourselves? We haven't. Who said so? Well, we just have, lots of them, and proud we are of our pets.

How about reformed spelling" and decimal notation, classification, — close and loose, - duets rivalling in intensity and vigor those sung by our feline friends upon back walls in dead of night? And all the coöperatives, coöperative cataloguing, coöperative indexing, cooperative purchasing, and in time, perhaps (who knows?) coöperative reading, coöperative thinking, coöperative brains, and (why not?) the grand central bureau of coöperative management; and so, with the aid of rubber stamps, stenographers, and electricity, do away with the necessity for librarians altogether?

Then the subject of buildings, great and small; shelf systems; pneumatic and automatic indicators; subject colors for binding; buckram vs. leather; and the school, fiction, and juvenile questions. Excellent hobbies, these; many of them deserving a higher epithet than "hobby," and blossoming into the realm of divine enthusiasms. That's it, -enthusiasms, they are what the librarians need, enthusiasms for everything useful.

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To the librarian - the cosmopolite in the world of letters and knowledge — hobbies are as indispensable as steam to the engine, when the safety-valve is in good working order, and discretion and "gumption" must be his governor and valve.

In the character of adviser-general to everybody and his wife you must be like the chameleon, and take color from the immediate environment. You whose work is never done must depend, to some extent, upon the knowledge of others; but you must be independently dependent. Each must work out for himself his own scheme of salvation; and another's hobby may, or may not, be of use in your own particular case. There is such a diversity of opinion among even experts in every line of

Pride in his own town and State may lead him into an historical society, or half-a-dozen local scientific and literary clubs, merely for the sake of studying the bibliography of his own city, county, or State, all to the general good of his constituents, let us hope, and to the strengthening of his personal influence upon them. He must have a hobby for a little detective business sometimes, for the protection of his library. A hobby for the evil influences of light reading and printed poison will inevitably lead him to exert more personal influence and direction over his readers, and a closer scrutiny of the class of fiction bought for his library.

And so I might go on multiplying instances; but you can work them out for yourselves better than I.

Above all must he have a hobby for books. While he is not a bibliopole, a book-seller, he must be a book-buyer, and must study the art; and to do that he must be a bibliophile in his love for books; a bibliognoste in his knowledge of title-pages, colophons, editions, etc.;

a bibliopegist in his knowledge of their exterior and material forms, their bindings; a bibliographer, learned in the lore of special subjects. All these are necessary to his education as a bibliologist; while he must use his discretion and avoid the danger of becoming a bibliotaphe, a hoarder and concealer of his treasures under glass cases and in dark places, — a bibliothecal miser, in fact; or a bibliolatrist, and falling into too great worship of them; or a bibliomaniac, and coveting their possession too greatly.

L'ENVOI.

Cultivate hobbies! Don't confine yourself to one. Dare to be broad, and to be narrow too, broad in a few subjects in which to verse yourself thoroughly; narrow in many minor things of which you can but gain a superficial knowledge at the best; and you will find that the aggregate of many narrow things will add wonderfully to the breadth of your general nature and knowledge.

Cultivate hobbies, both in yourself and in others. They will bring you into sympathy with the many, making you useful to them, and them to you.

Cultivate hobbies. Have plenty of them, but don't make others ride them, willy-nilly. Keep them to yourself, unless you can give others a lift with them.

Cultivate hobbies; they are the healthy impulses which refresh one's life; they are the inspirations, the "heavenly visions " sent to these latter-day generations, as were the divine commands to the prophets of old. Study them, attend to their voices, and be able to say with Paul, "Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision." Above all, have a hobby for hobbies.

BY

Y constituents is not meant political constituents. It is unfortunate for any librarian when he holds his office in a public library as a political favor, and library appointments should be as far removed as possible from all party influences. A public library, like any other public property, is susceptible of being used as a tool, and may easily degenerate into a political job, unless specially protected by its charter. New York city has one such library. The library exists for the librarians; its constituents not readers are of the school of politics. The example, it is to be hoped, is a unique one in our country.

A brief retrospect of the libraries and librarians of the past may help us to more fully comprehend the situation of the librarian and his constituents of to-day.

The monk represented the librarian of the Middle Ages. He was not by profession a librarian, and yet the valuable service he rendered to literature entitles him to the name. He was at once chorister, master of ceremonies, transcriber, illuminator, and collector. Professedly the monk was a religious ascetic. He retired from the world to devote himself to religion, to a life of self-denial. His language was the Latin; the books or MSS. that surrounded him were works of the Fathers, books of devotion, service-books, and the classics. These were just in keeping with his life and thoughts. A congenial occupation was thus opened to him. The hours of the cloister were made shorter as the monk duplicated and reduplicated some dainty missal, or some commentary of Augustine, or painted a miniature of the Virgin or of the apostles.

However much we may differ in opinion as to the service rendered to religion by the monasteries of the Middle Ages, as librarians we have a fellow-feeling with these toiling monks, and are grateful to them for the service they

have rendered the libraries of to-day by their preservation of works that otherwise would have been destroyed. There is nothing in the book-making arts of to-day to compare with the artistic skill displayed in the illuminations and miniature-painting which enrich and beautify the MSS. of those times.

The monastic libraries were small, and the readers few. Books were loaned from monastery to monastery. They were distributed once a year, at the Lenten season. As each borrower returned his book he was catechised as to its contents; if the examination was satisfactory he was allowed another book for the coming year; if not, he must take his old book again.

One not a member of the order of St. Benedict, or an attaché of Cluny or Canterbury, could procure the coveted treasure, sometimes, by pledging to return with the MS. borrowed a full transcription.

Library economy in these ages was very simple. Catalogues were little more than inventories, and no discordant notes were chanted, in duets or solos, over systems of classification. The absolute or fixed system of shelving was in vogue, the books being held in their places by chains. The survival of this feature exists in the attachments of the modern city directory.

But, not to linger longer in cloisters or abbeys, we come to the age of printing and to the foundation of the modern libraries of Europe; the treasures in the monastic libraries contributing to form their vast collections.

The monk's occupation as a librarian was gone, and he was succeeded by the collector, the keeper, the scholar. In the centuries immediately succeeding the invention of printing. there was a growing diffusion of knowledge by means of libraries. We smile at the restrictions imposed, and look upon them as so many fetters on the intellect. It is, however, to be