I reasoned with him. He had read Benvenuto, I said, and Benvenuto was waiting for him in the public library if he desired to renew his acquaintance with him. Here, I said, are many volumes of biography and autobiography in place of the one for which you cry. Here is a book entitled “The Life and Labours of Henry W. Grady, his Speeches, Writings, etc., Being in Addition to a Graphic Sketch of His Life, a Collection of His Most Remarkable Speeches and Such of His Writings as Best Illustrate His Character and Show the Wonderful Brilliancy of His Intellect, also Such Letters, Speeches, and Newspaper Articles in connection with His Life and Death as Will Be of General Interest.” Here, I said, is “Colonel Thomas Blood, Crown Stealer,” by Wilbur Cortez Abbott, a highly entertaining book. Here, I continued, as a preface to this collection of the “Essays in Prose and Verse of J. Clarence Mangan,” is an illuminating biographical essay by Mr. C. P. Meehan, together with Mr. J. Wilson’s “Phrenological Description of Mangan’s Head,” and “The Poet’s Own Recipe to Make Tar Water.” Here is-- But my friend rudely interrupted my well-meant remarks, and went in quest of Cellini to the south-west corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, where he found a library more suited to his efficient tastes. In doing this he was perfectly justified. Public Libraries should be efficient. They are places to which you go to get useful but uninteresting information. But there is no more reason for your own library to resemble a public library than there is for your study to resemble your office, or for your dining-room to resemble the Automat, or for every bedroom in your house to bear on its door printed directions to ring twice for your wife to bring you hot water and three times for a clean collar. The crowning virtue of the successful private library is inefficiency. As an example closely approaching the ideal, as a model to householders who have been allowed a closet or vault in which to keep books, I respectfully present my own library. And in order that the radiance of its inefficiency may be as penetrating as possible, I wish my library to be considered in comparison with its efficient rivals.