But how may one tell whether the true love of books is in him? To detect it in another, as already noted, requires more than a brief acquaintance. But to test oneself is easier. What would the world be to you without books? Could you go on living your life, physically and mentally, even as you do now, if the whole great series, from big to little, from old to new, from the Bible and Shakespeare down to the latest novel, were utterly wiped away? If you can truthfully say that such a cataclysm would make no difference to you, then you certainly do not love books. If the loss of them, or of some part of them--even the least--would leave a void in your life, then you have that love in greater or less degree, in finer or coarser quality. Let us pity those who have it not. And as for you who have it, you surely have not only a fundamental qualification for librarianship, but that which will make, and does make, of you better men and women. Let us perfect ourselves in all the minutiæ of our profession, let us study how to elevate it and make it more effective, but let us not forget the book, without which it would have no existence. Possibly the librarian who reads is lost, but the librarian who has never read, or who, having read, has imbibed from reading no feeling toward books but those of dislike or indifference, is surely worse than lost--he has, so far as true librarianship goes, never existed. THE LIBRARY AS THE EDUCATIONAL CENTER OF A TOWN In using this expression it is not intended to imply that the library is, or should be, the only place in a town where educational processes are going on--perhaps not even the principal place. The center of a circle is not the whole circle; its area is zero, it is simply a point so related to other parts of the figure as to give it supreme importance. The center of a wheel, through which the axle passes, is not the whole wheel, but around it the whole wheel turns. So the educational functions of a town library, while they may not bulk large in a catalog, should be so related to those of other institutions in the community as to give it peculiar importance and authority. It is not necessary here to remark that education is what its name implies--a drawing out, a development of potentialities. Because it is this, and only this, it will never make a Shakespeare or a Newton out of one who has it not “in him,” as the idiom so well runs, to become one or the other. Because it is this, there are men who do have in them potentialities of usefulness, perhaps even of greatness, but who for lack of it, die undeveloped; “mute” and “inglorious.”