Elora, $400 additional; Hespeler, $9000; Leamington, $10,000; Midland, $12,500; New Liskeard, $10,000; Orilla, $1000 additional; Ower. Sound, $7500 additional; Port Arthur, $10,000 additional; Preston, $2000 additional; Simcoe, $10,000; Grimsby, $10,000. Foreign The twenty-second annual report of the Public library of Belfast, Ireland, shows a circulation of 487,945 v, an increase of 30,371 v. over the previous year. Borrowers' cards, 18,094, an increase of nearly 4000. A steady decrease in the A steady decrease in the use of fiction is reported, the per cent for this year, 61.45, being the lowest for 17 years. A course of lectures on literary and scientific subjects was given during the winter on Wednesday evenings; average attendance, 235. In the reference. room 35,438 readers are recorded and the use of 62,431 v. The stock of the reference room is 30,859. Death of Dr A. B. Meyer 1840-1911 The death occurring February 5-of Dr A. B. Meyer, of Berlin, the nestor of museum officials and the friendly investigator of American librarier and museums, brings a sad loss into our circle of foreign friends. Dr Meyer will be most kindly remembered in many libraries and other institutions visited by him during his American tour. Hardly ever did a scholar visit us with a mind so open to our good sides and to those elements of the American library idea that reserve universal recognition, than did this famous scholar and scientist. In his quiet way, he dug out the fundamental thoughts underlying our public library system, and reproduced them in a book that remains as yet one of the very best general handbooks of American library service. Unlike many others, he judged without prejudice and was faithful in his treatment of the facts. For this reason, also, his two large reports on our museums and libraries are of lasting value. clude a number of large and exquisitely We need a committee to consider and report from time to time upon standardizing staff qualifications, staff organization and nomenclature. At present the librarian, head of the staff, has the professional rank in most colleges. Below that there is usually no definite relationship. Assistant librarian has a great variety of meanings in different libraries-anywhere from a Ph. D. to a page. There is no established organization of a college library staff or of admission to the staff. We have no nomenclature, hence do not speak a common language. Harvard and Columbia have taken definite action as to the relation of the library assistant to the Carnegie Foundation and these may serve as guide to others.-Dr W. E. Henny, University of Washington, at A. L. A. 1911. A brief suggestive list for summer reading has been compiled by Jessie Black and Irene Warren, of the School of education, University of Chicago. The list contains books for parents and children and was prepared at the request of the Parents' association of the elementary schools. A "Little Women" Memorial The Woman's club of Concord, Mass., has started a movement to purchase and maintain as a permanent memorial to Louisa M. Alcott the Orchard house, where Miss Alcott wrote "Little women and many of her stories. While it is hoped that the donations will all be voluntary, it is necessary to spread the news of the movement. Librarians of children's rooms in schools and libraries, as well as the children them Dr Meyer's contributions to science in- selves, will probably be interested. Vol. 16 Public Libraries (MONTHLY) October, 1911 The Pleasures of Reading* Robert M. Wenly, professor of philosophy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. All The pleasures of reading are a record of personal experiences, but like certain. railroads, they do not always succeed for want of good terminal facilities. reading divides itself into three classes: the reading of literature which is on one's level; reading of literature which is below one's level; and reading of literature which is above one's level. Although pleasure may be obtained from all kinds the real pleasure which lasts is to be found only in the third class. Reading on one's own level is always popular reading, which is the reading that makes money for those who provide it. It is therefore the greatest in volume and is the material stuff which bothers librarians most. The popularity of the newspaper is due to the fact that it furnishes reading matter on the level with the masses of the people. In comparing the newspapers of the United States, Germany, Italy and France it can be seen how each is dominated by the spirit of the nation it represents. An Englishman would not tolerate the theological discussion which appears in Scottish papers because he does not understand it. An American is on the same level, judging from the lack of such discussion in our papers, whose pages are devoted mostly to sporting news. America has no papers similar to the Sketch, Black and White, the Illustrated London News and the Graphic. The London Spectator and the New York Nation are somewhat similar in character *Read before the joint meeting of Ohio and Michigan library associations at Cedar Point, O., Sept. 6, 1911. From the secretary's report. No. 8 but the popular conception of these is shown in the titles applied to them. The Nation is termed "Mugwump," which defined means "knocker," while the spectator is defined "Granny," because it talks constantly about what happened 30 years. ago. It represents the ideas of the cathedral city and gives its readers pleasure because it tells them what they think they ought to think. Such a pleasure, however, is an evanescent one. Nevertheless all this material is kept and filed away because in the future it may provide some important fact and the opinions expressed therein may later be interesting as curi osities. The pleasure furnished to some by the level than one's self, is not only evanessecond kind of reading, that on a lower cent in nature but tends to pull one down. It deals with trifling, abnormal and immoral matters. The most reputable examples of this class are to be found in the English restoration drama, so one may judge what the worst is. Titles of some of the new restoration dramas-plays which have been produced on the boards of English speaking people during the last 18 months, can give no pleasure that will last. They go below the decent level of ordinary life. It is a mistake to suppose that men and women are all bad. They live on a decent level or society this class for to a large extent they are would go to pieces. Newspapers are in They trace the abnormal but do not tell the good things that are going on in the city. This sort of literature represents the curve away from the truth. Imagine the effect on history if all records of our times but these seven plays and the abnormal and so are in measure immoral. newspapers were lost. Literature on one's own level does not last because it does not challenge, but allows one to drift with it. Work which lasts is never the work of a single individual but is the work of an enormous social complexity speaking through the individual. It is above the ordinary level because the author is much more complex who interprets the great whole of which he is a part. What he gives comes from a universal whole and always remains. Literature of that kind cannot be destroyed without something of the same sort being produced. From this kind of literature alone can true pleasure be obtained. In speaking of where the pleasure comes from in this kind of literature George Dawson says: "It keeps out the seven devils of bitterness, frivolity, fashionableness, scandal, slander, gentility and the chronicling of small beer." Arnold of Rugby says: "I hold it to be certain that the truth is to be found in the great man and error in the little man." Pleasure, according to Aristotle, is a full, free and unimpeded functioning of the soul (or self). How this functions in reading is understood by the man who assembles books, for it is only the man who knows about the pleasures of reading who does father books. This pleasure has a dialectic movement, a movement which involves two factors, one on one side and one on the other, and between them is a pendulumlike swinging. One of these factors is the self. It would be easy to make a very select list of library patrons who have a genuine appreciation of good books. The other side of the pendulumlike swing is the culture, the whole stage of civilization which the author represents. The good author always represents some of the spacious things from good human nature, for which he speaks, and this confers pleasure because it deals with humanity and reveals something to the reader, something hitherto undiscovered in his own nature and so develops his possibilities. Shakespeare is the full flower of the renaissance movement. Everything was developing slowly towards him and is in a less complete stage until it reaches him. The renaissance movement grew out of the end of the medieval period and preserved a great many characteristics which belonged to mediæval society. Just as the individual counts for a lot to-day it counted for very little with mediæval men. He counted only in so far as he belonged to a certain class. All men and women dressed according to the class to which they belonged. His dress indicated the status of his class. The lower the rank of society the fewer possibilities there were of variegated types. Shakespeare quite unconsciously shared this conviction. this conviction. Poetry cannot be found below a certain rank in life. There is no good poetry to-day because writers have tried to make it about the ordinary man. It must be about the greater man. Every one of Shakespeare's important characters is a personage-a man who is on a fairly high level of society. Hamlet is a personage because he is a prince. Shakespeare asks his readers to step up to a level where a complete life is possible. Though situations differ the reader may find points of contact in experience between himself and characters in fiction. If these characters are above him it tends to elevate him, for when one finds himself standing on a level with a man who had greater opportunities it reveals to him an aspect that has not occurred to him before. Tennyson is criticized by certain writers of to-day because he is conventional and represents the middle class, but this redounds to his credit. His works are the most complete representation of the national temper during the Victorian period that any nation has ever had written by any of its great poets. If all their records were destroyed one could reconstruct the temper of that time from his works alone. Reading of this sort cannot help but broaden one. Lives are com mon if they are on the average. When George Eliot first began to write every reader asked whether this writer was a disciple of Thackeray. Dickens is typical of one group and Thackeray of |