The circulating department of the public library is now supplemented by others that are conducted for cash profit. These have sprung up in many cities. And now we have the "Book-Lovers' Library," a corporation with capital stock, engaging in business for profit. It has the advantage of certain trust features. It proposes to organize branches in all of the principal cities and towns in the country. For five dollars a year it proposes to supply fifty dollars' worth of reading to each subscriber. An automobile is employed, with an attendant to deliver the books to subscribers each week and take up those that have been read. Having paid five, ten or more dollars, at the beginning of the year, the subscriber can read from morning till night, while the new books come and go with the lightning speed of the automobile. As in many other circulating libraries, new copyrighted fiction is the chief staple supplied by the "Book-Lovers' Library"--the sweetest pabulum automatically administered. After a season of such dissipation call in a neurologist to diagnose your patient, and he will advise you that by continuing the treatment the mind will be reduced to a sieve, if not ultimately to absolute imbecility. Having abandoned the more serious literature that calls into use all the faculties of the mind, the reader of nothing but fiction converts what would otherwise be a healthful recreation into dissipation, that is enervating and permanently debilitating to all the faculties of the mind, when carried to an extreme. Had the reader been denied the use of this automatic machine, and been compelled, as formerly, to browse through the book store in search of something to read, more serious books would have been selected--history, travel, descriptive writing or popular science, with an occasional novel by way of recreation. But to continue the argument, suppose we abolish the bookseller, as has been proposed. This would not be a difficult matter. Most of them would gladly be "abolished" if they could sell out their stock for anything near what it cost them. Their profits have been so reduced by unfair competition that they are not sufficient to pay the cost of doing business. They have been compelled to carry side lines, as stationery, newspapers, periodicals, sporting goods, _bric-a-brac_, wall paper, etc., in order to make a living. By this means they have learned that other lines of merchandise yield a better profit than books. As a result most of them have greatly reduced their book stock, or entirely abandoned the sale of books, and put in more profitable lines of merchandise. The causes that have led up to this result are manifold: 1st. They were strenuously urged, and they finally consented to allow discounts: (_a_) To ministers of the gospel, since they are public benefactors. (_b_) To school teachers, since they are public educators and benefactors.