we, like the old prophet, should count the way-faring man a fool, and how far he uses his license to lie. Hence they will read that they may make up their minds whether all MARK TWAIN'S caricatures have the ring of truth. A German table d'hote of twenty courses will surfeit a careless diner before it is half over, and yet fail to afford him either what he likes best or what he should like best. Hence it compels guests to a careful choice what they will partake of and what refuse of the blessing there is no room to receive in its fulness. A similar influence will be exerted by the free library where we fall into the embarassment of riches. We shall be driven to select from its bill of fare, that is the catalogue, that fraction which we can enjoy most and which will profit us most. "Taste after taste upheld by kindliest change." Some persons, when they survey a library and perceive that they can never read the hundredth part of its volumes, will be attracted to those works which teach "what to read," or open a panoramic outlook on the diversified regions of the bookish world. "Of all the best of man's best knowledges, The contents, indexes and title-pages, Through all past, present, and succeeding ages." Unless we thus liberalize our views we are likely to vegetate, like the rhubarb pie plant, under a barrel, and see the world only through its bunghole. Ignorant of bibliographical guides and hence at a loss how to estimate books, the steward of a British nobleman sold as rubbish all volumes in the library which lacked _covers_. One of those thus disposed of, and bought by a pedlar for nine pence, proved to be the very earliest issue of the British press, snapped up by the British museum for £80, and could not now be bought for ten times that sum. In regard to the _intrinsic_ value of books blunders more egregious are daily made. Libraries were never so needful as now, for libraries and life never lay so close to one another as now. Our familiar sights lead to interest in recondite knowledge. Photography, gas, the locomotive, kerosene, yes, every match that lights it, provokes questions in chemistry, or philosophy, which not every library can answer. No one can gaze at the dome of our Capitol without naturally falling into architectural inquiries which draw him through a world of books that expose the nakedness of his ignorance, yet never put him to open shame. But the truth is too palpable to dwell on that in our day life touches libraries at every point.