a covered way, is the great Music Hall, with a seating capacity of 5400, and the room to pack in nearly 7000 people. In this superb hall the great annual musical festivals are held. It has a plain interior, sealed entirely in wood, and with almost no ornamentation to impair its resonance. The courage of the projectors who dared to build this hall for a purely musical purpose and not for display is already vindicated. It is no doubt the best auditorium in the country. As age darkens the wood, the interior grows rich, and it is discovered that the effect of the seasoning of the wood or of the musical vibrations steadily improves the acoustic properties, having the same effect upon the sonorousness of the wood that long use has upon a good violin. The whole interior is a magnificent sounding-board, if that is the proper expression, and for fifty years, if the hall stands, it will constantly improve, and have a resonant quality unparalleled in any other auditorium. The city has a number of clubs, well housed, such as are common to other cities, and some that are peculiar. The Cuvier Club, for the preservation of game, has a very large museum of birds, animals, and fishes, beautifully prepared and arranged. The Historical and Philosophical Society has also good quarters, a library of about 10,000 books and 44,000 pamphlets, and is becoming an important depository of historical manuscripts. The Literary Society, composed of 100 members, who meet weekly, in commodious apartments, to hear an essay, discuss general topics, and pass an hour socially about small tables, with something to eat and drink, has been vigorously-maintained since 1848. An institution of more general importance is the Free Public Library, which has about 150,000 books and 18,000 pamphlets. This is supported in part by an accumulated fund, but mainly by a city tax, which is appropriated through the Board of Education. The expenditures for it in 1887 were about $50,000. It has a notably fine art department. The Library is excellently managed by Mr. A. W. Whelpley, the librarian, who has increased its circulation and usefulness by recognizing the new idea that a librarian is not a mere custodian of books, but should be a stimulator and director of the reading of a community. This office becomes more and more important now that the good library has to compete for the attention of the young with the “cheap and nasty” publications of the day. It is probably due somewhat to direction in reading that books of fiction taken from the Library last year were only fifty-one per cent, of the whole.