"Free as air," was the old-time strongest expression. Then men learned how absolutely essential to physical well-being was abundance of water, and our language records in its favourite expression, "free as water," the meaning of the untold millions that civilization has spent to supply all people freely with this essential. We are learning the greater lesson about the necessity of free knowledge more slowly, because intellectual and spiritual things are not so readily discerned by our mortal eyes, and it takes more time to read even those messages that God has written very large for those who have eyes to see; but the time is not far distant, mark my words, when our speech will again record the general acceptance of a great truth in the common phrase, as "free as knowledge." We should make the public understand the relation of the school system to the library system; that the library is not merely a collection of books, or a storehouse, but an aggressive and active source of education, side by side with the free schools. If the issue came--but, thank God, it never will--between giving up either the library or the free school, I am not sure that I would not choose for the welfare of the country the public library rather than the school. This may sound strange from one who has given his life to education, but I believe that even without our schools nearly every boy and girl would somehow learn to read; and when I soberly consider the influence on lives and characters and on the State, it seems probable that, infinitely valuable as is the work of our free schools, it would be exceeded by what could be done by a system of free public libraries, reaching every boy and girl and man and woman in the community, and so administered as to provide each freely from childhood to the grave with the best reading in every field of interest and activity.