That the college library of the middle of the last century was little more than a storehouse for books, in which the undergraduate had very little interest, is amply substantiated by the reminiscences of older graduates. "To those of us who graduated thirty, or forty, or more years ago," said the late William Frederick Poole, "books, outside of text-books used, had no part in our education. They were never quoted, recommended, or mentioned by instructors in the class-room. As I remember it, Yale College library might as well have been in Wetherfield, or Bridgeport, as in New Haven, so far as the students in those days were concerned." In the old days at Columbia College, freshmen and sophomores were allowed to visit the library only once a month to gaze at the backs of books; the juniors were taken there once a week by a tutor who gave verbal information about the contents of the books, but only seniors were permitted to open the precious volumes, which they could draw from the library during one hour on Wednesday afternoons. In 1853, the salary of the librarian of Columbia was raised to three hundred dollars! Professor Brander Matthews, who graduated from Columbia in 1871, says that the library was at that time small and inconvenient and that he never entered it to read a book and never drew one from it during all the time he was an undergraduate. The rules of the old days forbade the use of any lights in the Harvard Library, "excepting only when the librarian is obliged to seal official letters with wax he may with proper precautions use a lighted taper for that purpose." This recalls an entry in the diary of John Langdon Sibley, who records spending "four hours with a lantern and cloak in the chilly cellar" where he found many books and pamphlets not in the College Library. Mr. Sibley, who spent 36 years in the service of the Harvard Library, has frequently been pictured as typical of the old style collector and custodian of books. The story is told of his having once completed an inventory of the library and, when seen crossing the yard with a particularly happy smile, was asked the reason for this pleased expression. "All the books are in excepting two," said he. "Agassiz has those and I am going after them." Exaggerated as this picture of him undoubtedly is, it must be said that he did lay much more emphasis upon the collecting and preservation of books than upon their use. His successor, Justin Winsor, was the author of the remark which has come to be regarded as one of the truisms of modern librarianship: "A book is never so useful as when it is in use."