Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Library Association: Held at Ottawa, Canada, June 26-July 2, 1912
Science
Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Library Association: Held at Ottawa, Canada, June 26-July 2, 1912
American Library Association; Library science -- Congresses
The personality, the self, is revealed in this imagery and in the
attitude of the spectator within us. You know those different
attitudes. There are some pictures that come upon the screen of
your mind, and the spectator within you is immediately interested.
For example, here comes a picture on the screen of your mind of the
day when that board that you had been working with so long, that
unintelligent board, that board made up of reactionary people that
you had so long been nursing, came to the point where you were able
to tell them of that scheme of yours which must inevitably, logically
and remorselessly lead to putting the library in your community on a
modern basis. When the picture of your triumph on that occasion comes
upon the screen of your mind, the spectator within you claps her hands
and says: "You were very clever about that; you waited a long time,
you worked it skillfully, you certainly are a capable person." You all
get pictures of that kind. You can't help looking at them. Here is
another slide--a reception. Of course, when they said that yours was
an extremely becoming gown, you were quite delighted; and you talked
well; you did say a lot of brilliant things. To be sure they were not
original--nobody expects that--but you were very fortunate in your
anthology that afternoon. I can see by the broad and amiable smiles all
of you are wearing, that pictures of a similarly agreeable kind are by
suggestion appearing on the screens of your minds.
But you have pictures of a very different sort. How could you?--of
course, you were just from the library school, it was only your first
position, but, at the same time, how could you?--you cannot imagine how
you could have mistaken Sir Thomas More, in the sixteenth, for Thomas
Moore in the nineteenth century. How could you have done it? Yet you
did. When that picture comes on the screen of your mind the spectator
within you shrinks and says: "Why must we look at that? Take it off at
once." It would be very piquant if I could take other illustrations
from your own experience, but I cannot do that. I shall have to take
one out of mine. I have a number which my spectator dislikes. Here is a
recent one:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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