It is true that the universe is a great battery incessantly sending an infinity of calls of infinitely varied messages. But the receiving operator may be asleep, he may never come within range. The universe is very wide. The range of experience of all is narrow, of some pitifully narrow. Because of lack of opportunity to see, to do, to know, to feel, it is not exaggeration to say that multitudes live a half-alive existence, never useful to their possible limit, never happy to their full, for happiness is "felt perfection." From the beginning of time, some men have received their messages, found their work, given their service, lived life to the full and laid it down with a will. The record of these men and their accomplishment, of man's great adventure to find himself, has been written by many hands, and that record is literature. Arnold says, "To know ourselves and the world we have, as a means to this end, to know the best that has been thought or said in the world," and "Literature may mean everything written or printed in a book." The library is the reservoir of literature, a collection of books, but it is something more, it comes to have identity, a self of its own beyond the sum of all its books, when, by the fusing of the whole under the vital power of the minds that gather and order it, it becomes, in the Shakespearian phrase embodied in my title, "A leaven'd and preparéd choice." The library is the one place where time and space are set at naught. It is the microcosm of the universe. Here all the wonders of nature are flashed back from the mirrors of eyes that have beheld them. Here India, and the Arctic and the isles of the sea are as close at hand as Niagara. Here Archimedes' lever, Giotto's circle, Newton's apple, Palissy's furnace, Jacquard's loom, Jamie Watt's tea-kettle, Franklin's kite are cheek by jowl with the last Marconigram. Here the fate of Aristides, of Columbus, of Gordon is as clear to read as the doings of yesterday in Chicago. The record of what happened at Thermopylæ, at Lucknow, at the Alamo receives beside it the tale of the courage that rose as the Titanic sank. What Buddha and Socrates and Jesus taught answers the cry and strengthens the heart of doubt and pain today. The library is the great whispering gallery of noble deeds and, catching a whisper, "The youth replies, I can" and goes forth. The library is haunted with visions of beauty that Plato, that Michael Angelo, that Shelley saw--the youth exclaims "I see!" and follows his lure. Here Clotho sits twirling her "thread-running spindle" and the youth, catching the clue, fares forth whither the fateful thread leads. The library is almost never the goal but to many it may be the starting point whence they go forth "to strength and endeavor, love and sacrifice, the making and achievement of souls."