Publicity furnished by us must be incidental, as I have said; or it must be general, but I believe it to be all the more effective for this, and I invite your attempts to make more frequent and better use of it in such ways as I have suggested. Study the business and industrial material in our Applied Science Room, or the commercial art material in our Art Room. Examine the collection of travel folders on display in our delivery hall. See our bulletin of daily attractions in St Louis, entered months ahead when we can get the information--and see whether you do not agree with me. Now let me remind you that you are paying for all this service, whether you make use of it or not. You are members of the best club in St. Louis. I don’t mean the Advertising Men’s Club, good as that is; I mean the Library Club. The taxgatherer collects the dues: if you are not a taxpayer you pay just the same, the burden being passed along to you in some of the many ways familiar to economists. The dues amount to about three cents a month for each inhabitant of St. Louis--not excessive. The club has the finest club house in the city, the most comfortable reading and study rooms, the finest and most useful books, the most intelligent and helpful attendants. You may have to belong to other clubs that you do not use; this, at least it would be folly to neglect. POETS, LIBRARIES AND REALITIES[17] We are met to dedicate a temple of the Book on the birthday of a man who did more than any other American, perhaps, to bring the book to the hearts of the masses. All poetry, all song, begins with the people, in the mouths of humble singers. Elaboration, refinement, unintelligent imitation, carry them both away from popular appreciation, until finally someone like James Whitcomb Riley brings them back. Great poetry is always about familiar things. Homeric epics tell of the kind of fighting that every Greek knew at first hand. The shepherds and shepherdesses of the earliest pastorals were the everyday workers of the fields. It was only at a later day the epic and pastoral grew artificial because the poets did their best to keep them unchanged while the things of which they told had passed away. Only when the poets forget the stilted symbols which once were real and discover that they themselves are surrounded by realities worthy of verse does poetry again become popular. It is this phenomenon that we are witnessing today.