delicate enough to record the greater danger to the individual and the State from poison in the great current, which has come to be a mighty flood, of modern reading matter. The most hopeful, and perhaps the only practicable, method of guarding against this serious danger is through the public library, which must now in the last days of this eventful century recognise the gravity of the new responsibility which it cannot shirk. Before another audience I might dwell at length on what this problem of selection means, but the representative librarians of the world will understand my claim that, wonderful as was the development from the cistern to the fountain, its importance is overshadowed by this great question of excluding the pernicious, which I sum up in the word filtration. This is the great problem of the modern library, and its solution must depend largely on the State. It is often said that the modern periodicals and newspapers are our greatest danger; but this, of course, is true only of the sensational and other objectionable types. I yield to none in my high appreciation of what the best kind of newspaper may do in its capacity as the strongest ally of the public library and of the public school. I am confident that early in the next century such journals will be recognised as a distinct part of our educational machinery, but I am equally clear that the worst journals, conducted merely as money-making enterprises, and catering to the worst instead of to the best elements of both society and individuals, are the most potent factors for evil, and the greatest enemy which the ideal librarian has to combat in carrying forward his best work. They leave their habitual readers with neither time nor taste for anything above their own low plane. The mind will inevitably rise or fall to the level of its habitual reading, and we apostles and missionaries of the book have no more disheartening outlook than on the readers whose literary atmosphere is limited to the modern sensational newspapers. But the apologists for such reading say that the history of their own times is of more importance to them than any other history; should they not, therefore, become as familiar as possible with it? But when a man, on account of "pressure of business," never looks inside any good book, yet has time to read everything in the newspapers, he is--well, specialising too much in "history." How many men and women there are, who, from year's end to year's end, read nothing but the so-called history of their own times, and who can tell you nothing better than which dog won the last fight! It is a good thing to know the history of our own times; so is a pinch of salt a good thing on one's breakfast potato, but it is not necessary to drink a barrel of sea water each morning in order to get it.