The lessons of the past and of the present all point to the increasing use of the library as a great engine of popular education, using the noun in its broadest sense and emphasizing the adjective. The library is more and more a great humanizing influence; if this is so, nothing human must be alien to it. And much that is human and humanizing is nevertheless ephemeral. With some the implications of this word are wholly contemptuous. Of a day! Does nothing valuable pass quickly away, having done its little work? The day itself is a day only and vanishes with the evening and the morning; yet it has its part in the record of the years. So with “ephemeral” literature. As we have seen, a great deal of what we are wont to consider as standard and permanent will ultimately perish. Yet be its life that of a year or a century, a book may play its little part in the mental development of those who read it. Just at present the favorite vehicle of literary expression is fiction. People put into stories what they have to say of history, sociology and ethics; they embody in romance their theories of aesthetics, economics and politics. There is good doctrine with a poor literary setting and there are paste jewels in pure gold. But taking it by and large the much decried deluge of modern fiction has undoubtedly been educative in its tendency. This is why I cannot yield to logic and predict the gradual disappearance of all but a small residuum of fiction from the public library. There is a tendency in that direction but there are some signs of a reaction. The seer may hope, even if he dare not predict, that the great public library that can afford to do so will continue to purchase such fiction as will interest or entertain the average person of education, even if it is to stay on the shelves but a few months.