Again, it is important that the relation of a public library to the question of entertainment should be clearly understood. Entertainment is not an element totally foreign to the purposes of a public library--the same kind of public benefit accrues in this case as in the case of public parks--but in the light of the infinitely more important functions which it renders, this must of necessity occupy a subordinate place. The primary function of a library is to render a service, to supply a need, to respond to a demand. In this respect its value to the community is of the same description as the postal system, the bank at which one may cash a check, or the reservoir from which one may "turn on" a supply of water. One of the points which Mr. O'Brien aims to make, and which proceeds from a manifest confusion of thought, can be appropriately noticed here. His contention is that a public library is for the "class" who may be designated "book-readers," that these form but a small percentage of any community, and that therefore it is obviously wrong that the library should receive public support. This is ingenious, as is also his eloquent, though somewhat contemptuous setting of their supposed special needs over against those of others. "Are theatre-goers, lovers of cricket, bicyclists, amateurs of music, and others to have their earnings confiscated," merely that the "book-reader" may gratify his peculiar craving? Like many other ingenious theories, however, it leaves out of account certain fundamentally important bearings of the subject. There can be no doubt that in any community "the book-reader" is not synonymous with the entire population. Some of the population are children in arms; some have never learned to read; the sight of some who have learned has failed; others again are too fully occupied to find time for it; others find their inclination drawn more strongly in other directions; others still have more or less to do with reading, yet are not, in the strict sense, "book-readers." Yet we shall err very widely if we lose sight of the fact that even those who do not personally perform the role of the "book-reader" do nevertheless benefit by the existence of the library, by proxy. The young child is read to, by his mother; or is cared for by her, by methods learned through her use of books. The busy "captain of industry," whose large profits are due to a skillful application of scientific principles, may find his own time so closely occupied by details of administration that, personally, he seldom opens the treatises which bear upon the subject, but he expects to keep abreast of the ever unfolding science, by the consultation not only of such works as private ownership may provide, but the more nearly complete collection in a great public library.