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upon your definition of them, and the reasonable view of the matter is simply that they should be used, if at all, in some reasonable sense. Dogmatic definitions and dogmatic theories are as destructive of life in literature as in theology.

II.

I have been asked to discuss Longfellow's Psalm of Life. This poem, it seems, is one of those on which examinations for graduation from the common-school course in Indiana are to be based and teachers and pupils are more than usually interested in it. It would seem quite unnecessary to say anything by way of explanation of such a well known poem as this, and yet I have found that many who knew the poem by heart had very little understanding of the real trend of thought in it. The careless and thoughtless attitude of too much of our reading, whether in or out of school, is sure to leave only hazy and indistinct, or perhaps entirely erroneous notions of a poet's meaning. A poem that is worth anything at all, is worth careful study. We should not be content with a mere mastery of the verbal form. The significance of the selection must not only be seen from the outside but we must take it up into our own being and assimilate it. It would be fair to say that the great defect in our reading work is that we fail to establish this contact of mind with mind. It does not occur to us, as it should, that there is a message for us in the poem or essay read. A piece of literature will change or accentuate some phase of the reader's mental attitude, and yet there are some cold-blooded beings who are never touched by the fine sentiment of the poet. I have very little sympathy with the view that in the study of a poem, for instance, you must carefully avoid the questioning attitude, and allow the meaning of the writer to soak into your consciousness by some sort of mysterious and occult process. I do not mean of course that in undertaking a little poem like the Psalm of Life that one should nerve himself to the same tension that he would in attempting a problem in calculus or in grappling with some question in metaphysics. I mean simply that the mind must be active and open to every effect produced, whether it be the statement of some view upon life, some beautiful picture, some simple emotion, or some exhortation. Not only must the mind be open

to these effects as individuals but there must be the weighing and unifying of all these. Such a process, properly directed, does not result in deadening one's poetic sense, in blunting one's imaginative power, but quite the opposite. It tends to clearness of view. It gives the feeling of pleasure that results from the sense of mastery. It results in the thrill that possesses us when we suddenly find ourselves face to face with ennobling ideals.

III.

It is not necessary to use space in quoting A Psalm of Life in full as any reader of this article will either have it in mind or be able to refer to it at once. Let us begin by asking what significance there is in the title and its sub-title-" A Psalm of Life: What the heart of a young man said to the psalmist." The word psalm refers specifically to a hymn or song for use in holy worship and consequently distinguished by exaltation of sentiment and mood. This exaltation we expect to find in the poet's view of life. We have the poet's own word for it that the word psalmist in the sub-title does not refer to either David or Solomon as some have supposed but to the author himself. We are to think of the poem then as expressing the mood of the higher nature as it rises triumphant over the gloomy suggestions of the lower. It is the clear bugleblast of strength, the call to duty, the call to leave behind the darkness of despondency and turn the face toward the light of hope and strenuous endeavor. In a letter, Longfellow speaks of it as a "voice from my inmost heart at a time when I was rallying from depression." This general purpose of the poem is still further suggested by the lines from Crashaw, prefixed to the first draft but dropped from later editions:

Life that shall send
A challenge to the end,

And when it comes say, Welcome, friend. What are the gloomy thoughts which have brought the mind to a standstill? That "lite is but an empty dream" (stanza 1); that it lacks reality (st. 1); that "all are of dust, and all turn to dust again" (st. 2); in short, that life has no validity and is not worth the living.

What are the propositions and exhortations made by the "heart of the young man" to offset these gloomy thoughts?

Since the poem is largely didactic and

hortative in its character it does not have the picturesque or story element entering in to such an extent as in the other poems studied. The truths stated and the calls to action given are such as the young man would naturally give in vindicating his own position and inciting others to catch step with him. The following may suffice for a brief summary:

1. Life is not mere emptiness (st. 1) but earnest reality (st. 2).

2. Life does not end at the grave (st. 2). 3. The true purpose of life is growth through action (st. 3).

4. Brevity of time as contrasted with length of time necessary to accomplish any great work [art] (st. 4).

5. Exhortation to heroic action (st. 5). 6. Exhortation to action in the present (st. 6).

7. The inspiration of great men to noble action (st. 7), and the possibility that we in turn may help others (st. 8).

Ecclesiastes III-20. Of what was the third line of stanza two spoken?

What two theories of the end of life are rejected in stanza three? Note how these ideas find expression in the passages:

a. Take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry.— Luke xii-19.

b. This world's a wilderness of woe.-Favorite Song.

(Is the song quoted from a good one to instill the right spirit into the pupil?) Compare the idea expressed in the last two lines of stanza three with the idea of life set forth in Excelsior.

In what sense is "Art" used in stanza four? See International Dictionary. Does "hearts" refer to the soul or to the heart in the body? If the former does stanza four contradict stanza two? Connection between "muffled drums" and "funeral marches"? To what is life compared in stanza five? What two phases does this warfare take on? Work on the battle-field and in the bivouac. What two phases of the work of life are referred to here? What two attitudes are posSee lines three and

8. Final exhortation to labor (st. 9). Simpler statements may possibly present themselves for some of these points. Sim-sible for the soldier? plicity of analysis should always be aimed at. As suggested above it is possible to obscure a very simple piece of literature with a complex piece of analytic machin

ery.

IV.

How does the speaker arrive at the first thought or principle stated above? This is generally the hardest point in the poem for the pupil to see. I quote the following as a clear statement of it: "The thought of the first stanza is: Do not say, Life is a dream, for a dream occurs in sleep, and the sleep of the soul is death, in which there are no dreams. Then, again, in a dream things only seem they do not exist. But such things are not; hence life, which is a real thing, is not a dream." What is meant by the word "numbers"? Poetry, since verses in poetry are divided into feet, a certain number of these making a line. Cf. Pope's line:

I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. Does the dictionary give this use of "numbers"? Why" mournful numbers"? Why "empty dream"? Give an equivalent expression for the second line of stanza two. What biblical reference in stanza two? See

four of stanza five. Compare stanza six with the following inscription from Hyperion:

"Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear and with a manly heart."

Explain the meaning of line two, stanza six. Note the biblical origin of the expression, Matthew VIII-23. What is gained by repetition of "act" in line three? What are the two conditions of successful action?

What is the comparison suggested in the "footprints on the sands of time"? Just as on the seashore footprints are quickly effaced memory of ordinary deeds. Only by means by the waves, so time soon blots out the of heroic action can any one hope to discourage us or nerve us to greater effort? leave permanent footprints. Does this fact To what is life compared in stanza eight? Why the word "solemn" in line two?

Is action easier when the reward is attractive and in sight or when it is hidden and we must "wait"? In what does the strength of this poem lie? It stirs us to action under the second set of conditions. The ideas of the poem, or kindred ideas, find expression in many of Longfellow's later productions. Profitable comparisons may be made with The Light of Stars, Excelsior,

The Goblet of Life, The Wind Over the Chimney, larity of this poem? Does its didactic Evangeline, etc.

V.

quality interfere with its rank as a work of art? (Interesting references to the poem may be found in Longfellow's Life of Long

How do you account for the great popu- fellow.)

CERTAIN ESSENTIALS OF LIBRARY EQUIPMENT.

By MRS. LUCIUS B. SWIFT.

MY FIRST and special anxiety is to learn whether my listeners and I have any common standing ground. For instance, do you to-day accept old Isaac Barrow's dictum: He that loveth a book shall never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion or an effectual comfort. I suppose that in Barrow's time he never dreamed that the day would come when bad books and mediocre books would flood the world. He that loveth a good book shall indeed never want a faithful friend; but what of all those that so corrupt and deaden the taste that we no longer recognize the faithful friend, the wholesome counsellor, and the effectual comfort. The veneration for a book simply as a book is no longer for us. We must believe and we must act upon the theory that books are like the people who write them and who read them-of all sorts; at one extreme all that is noble and inspiring; at the other, all that is vicious.

The trace of old Isaac Barrow's veneration for the books of his age, few in number and containing the best and ripest thought, shows grotesquely and curiously in the remark you hear every day from the satisfied parent who tells you that some particular son or daughter "is always reading." Nowadays I reply, "Well, it is more than likely that the child is getting no good." When I was in the teacher's profession I approached the question and the parent with more circumspection. A bookish doctor who probably in his whole life had read nothing but good literature had a son who read nothing but trash, and so much of that that an attendant in a public library felt it a duty to warn the father. He brushed her warning aside with, "Just let me know that my son is with books, books, that's all I want to know."

What is your feeling toward the public library of to-day? Are you unconsciously

governed by the sentiment of old Isaac Barrow's veneration for a book, and therefore believe that a library is, by the fact of its existence, a weapon of true culture in your community or may we now proceed to examine critically the modern library unhampered by a veneration suited to a different age. If so, you will agree with me that it is a debatable question whether a large number of public libraries are not doing more harm than good. If they are sowing broadcast noxious weeds of the Canada-thistle sort, the good doctor who thought his son safe because he was with books had best bestir himself.

A yellow library or even a yellowish li brary is not going to prove a bulwark of culture in any community. What are the earmarks of such? One is where stress is laid on a large circulation; another is regulating the sorts of literature to be purchased by the pressure of a so-called public demand. A library directed and developed upon these two theories is of doubtful value in a community. The tendencies of such a library are downward, for it increases the number who crave the meretricious; we too often forget that the commonplace is meretricious to the taste, while it is morally innocuous, and the pity is that we are not yet sensitive to the sin of vulgarizing taste.

It seems to be demanding little to say that efforts to secure circulation should be governed by the quality of the books that can be circulated, and that there should be consideration of the sort of people who are using the books and what they are using them for. It should be a duty to watch for the faintest sign of what I may call the leaders of good influence, and these should be catered to. In the small city, it is inexcusable to be long oblivious to these signs, but I believe they are by most librarians ignored. The serious young girl is to write a

paper for her club upon the dangers of the expansion policy for this country, and has heard that Speaker Reed, Senator Hoar, exSenators Edmunds and Sherman, Bishop Potter, Carl Schurz and a long list of other good names have declared against this policy. She asks for the files of the publications containing this current opinion. A library seriously mistakes its true sphere if it is not only unable to put this before her but meets the request with indifference upon the ground that the papers containing what she wants have not been "called for" enough to warrant their production in the library; still more culpable is this library, if, at the same time, it is busy supplying a line three deep of little boys and girls who mostly can not recall the author or the title of the book just returned over the counter, and is steadily catering to the always increasing and more loudly clamoring novel-reading women. This brings us to the most pressing function of a library which is to be alive to current questions bearing on the duties of citizenship and to respond by furnishing the best that is being said together with the largest number of pertinent facts. The people who come for such facts form the nuclei of influence to be watched for and to be encouraged. They are to be encouraged to seek for the best current opinion and the widest range of facts by having these within their reach. If the management of a library is bent upon a big circulation the calls of such enquirers pass unnoticed. They appear, find little or nothing and disappear and make no complaint; all the same this is genuine public demand which the management of a library is not excusable for being blind and deaf to. Apply this test to most public libraries and it would oblige a librarian to seek out and acquire pamphlets which are the richest sources of information upon current questions. You find the average library bare of these or they are inaccessible because unclassified. Apply this test to the list of newspapers taken by a library and you would not find the capable and sinister New York Sun included because its cynicism amused a dozen habitues of a reading room and the New York Post excluded because these same habitues never called for it; although the most cursory examination of the latter's columns would convince any librarian that among newspapers it perhaps contained the most for any seeker of facts and opinion upon cur

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rent questions here and abroad. One such serious seeker as I have named, once a month, if a library performs the functions of a library, should more than outweigh the usual dozen persistent readers of papers in a reading room. Incidentally this suggests another test for library equipment which is to supply what can not well or conveniently be supplied except by a library. Files of well-chosen newspapers can only be housed in a library; yet these files are what are absolutely essential for every public speaker, writer, teacher, minister and student to have for reference; yet the newspapers are generally chosen for a few daily readers without reference to their more important function.

To the point of what is "public demand", that excuse given by so many libraries for their failure to maintain a good standard, apply a few tests. Is noise to be the test of public demand; are mere numbers to be the test? If so, the little boys waiting for their Optics and Algers and Hentys and the Saturday afternoon women crowding the rails for the Sunday novel may appear to be evidences of what is wanted, but it does not do to expect of the small still voice that has been asking for help in the way I have named, the volume of clamor of these others. The patrons of a library are not a democracy. All requests should not stand equal. equal. A library that is to strengthen and develop the best growth of a community is not managed by standing at the counter on Saturday afternoon to get the signs of the public needs, but the management rather persistently seeks to discover here and there the various centers of influence in the town. No library will discover these people whose taste and judgment about books would make them valuable allies if their suggestions of what the library should contain is to be met with the inquiry, why has it not been called for then. The would-be readers of such books are often few in number, are scattered, and work in different literary lines, the amount of their reading may be limited but the quality must be considered, and their hands strengthened in every possible way if a library management sincerely wishes to discover the pressing and real wants of the community which supports it.

I am not unmindful of the practical difficulties in the way of a librarian who wishes his library to uplift the community but who realizes that his tenure is subject to caprice and clamor. Making due allowance for the

necessity of compromise and conflicting demands, especially where the library is under the impetus of a bad start, he may keep his rudder fairly true and I may add with safety to himself if he follow this simple ruleavoid considerable purchases of the new output of books. Fill the gaps of the library with what has been tested by time; with the new, follow the policy of procrastination. All manner of clamor and dispute fade away with the lapse of a little time. This delay checks not only the waste of a purchasing fund upon excessive or unwholesome fiction but it checks also the equal waste upon poor and commonplace books with a serious purpose, never demanded, not worth the reading and happily dead and buried in a year's time. The vacuous novel reader of to-day has for her delectation hundreds of novels by authors unknown to her where a few years ago she depended upon the dozen Augusta Evanses, Mary J. Holmeses and Mrs. Southworths. These she could specifically demand and thus harry the librarian. To-day she would not know what to call for in the mass issuing from the press; it is the librarian's fault if she is assisted.

A second feasible aid to keep a library in the exercise of its function of forwarding the best life of a community is the very simple device of maintaining the just relative proportions of duplicates to be furnished for the different classes of books. Used as it should be, it is the intelligent librarian's most formidable weapon to beat back the readers of commonplace or worse fiction. To illustrate: To one Marcella published, there are a hundred other ordinary novels sent out. In the spirit of wise compromise a librarian may buy these because there is public talk and a call for them; but the error is in the number of copies. The usual library management provides only five duplicates, say, for the one fine novel, Marcella, while from two to ten duplicates each are furnished for the other one hundred ordinary novels, thus aiding and abetting the worse part of the public library. But the intent should be to push the reading of the one out of the hundred, and at most to be passive about aiding the one hundred ephemeral and ordinary novels. With only five duplicates for Marcella, the would-be readers become tired out and discouraged before they can get hold of the book; many who would have read the book earlier forget it and lose interest. Its influence in the reading world has thus been un

wisely and unnecessarily curtailed, while the influence of the less worthy books has been encouraged. If I wanted to aid a library in the most simple and practicable way to push good reading and to curb what is not, it would be by the careful management of the duplicate lists, increasing to the utmost the duplicates of the best fiction called for and diminishing to the utmost the duplicates of poor fiction and disposing of the duplicates of poor fiction just as rapidly as its vogue diminished.

I have left for the last, the consideration of the most important and most perplexing function of the library of to-day; the equipment for juvenile readers. What would old Isaac Barrow say, could he look over the books and question the readers of the bulk of juvenile fiction. Consider all that is implied in the phrase, "He that loveth a book," -It meant such richness of matter, such presentation of matter that its reader returned and returned again to be refreshed and delighted. You realize the chasm between that position of a book and the conditions to-day by the most superficial examination of what and how young people read. I do not so much fear for the lowering or the distortion of the moral standards of our young people by the literature furnished them in public libraries. Most of it is innocuous though some of the best intentioned will do the most lasting harm. Personally I had rather a boy rushed through dozens of Bloody Bill's Adventures than to have a girl follow that most unpleasant and abnormal Elsie from cradle to grave; and then begin upon her descendants. The effects of the untruth and vulgarity of the first will be more superficial than the equal but less apparent untruth and triteness of the last.

But it is difficult to exaggerate the intellectual harm that is to result from the present juvenile reading. There has not been time yet to realize its full consequences. The colossal commonplaceness of the literature, its colossal quantity, its power of intel lectual sterilization acting upon children between the primary and the high school will result in the extinction of literary taste with large numbers of the generation of young readers. That this danger is being realized is shown in the reaction of many thoughtful people against children's literature including the masterpieces done over (with everything worth while left out).

(Concluded on page 35.)

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