Library Work with Children | Page 6

intellect, the young Hercules should
astonish observers by feats of strength even in his cradle. Let not the
public library, then, be found working against nature by establishing, as
far as its influence goes, a dead level of intellectual attainments for all
persons below a certain age.
But there is a much larger class of young persons who ought not to be
excluded from the library, not because they have decided intellectual
cravings and are mentally mature, but because they have capacities for
the cultivation of good tastes, and because the cultivation of such tastes
cannot be begun too early. There is no greater mistake in morals than
that often covered by the saying, harmless enough literally, "Boys will
be boys." This saying is used perhaps oftener than for any other
purpose to justify boys in doing things which are morally not fit for
men to do, and is thus the expression of that great error that
immoralities early in life are to be expected and should not be severely
deprecated. The same misconception of the relations of youth to
maturity and of nature's great laws of growth and development is seen
in that common idea that children need not be expected to have any
literary tastes; that they may well be allowed to confine their reading to
the frivolous, the merely amusing. That this view is an erroneous one
thought and observation agree in showing. Much like the caution of the
mother who would not allow her son to bathe in the river till he had
learned to swim, is that of those who would have youth wait till a
certain age, when they ought to have good tastes formed, before they
can be admitted to companionship with the best influences for the

cultivation of them. Who will presume to set the age at which a child
may first be stirred with the beginnings of a healthy intellectual
appetite on getting a taste of the strong meat of good literature? This
point is one of the first importance. No after efforts can accomplish
what is done with ease early in life in the way of forming habits either
mental or moral, and if there is any truth in the idea that the public
library is not merely a storehouse for the supply of the wants of the
reading public, but also and especially an educational institution which
shall create wants where they do not exist, then the library ought to
bring its influences to bear on the young as early as possible.
And this is not a question of inducing young persons to read, but of
directing their reading into right channels. For in these times there is
little probability that exclusion from the public library will prevent their
reading. Poor, indeed, in all manner of resources, must be the child who
cannot now buy, beg, or borrow a fair supply of reading of some kind;
so that exclusion from the library is likely to be a shutting up of the boy
or girl to dime novels and story papers as the staple of reading.
Complaints are often made that public libraries foster a taste for light
reading, especially among the young. Those who make this complaint
too often fail to perceive that the tastes indulged by those who are
admitted to the use of the public library at the age of twelve or fourteen,
are the tastes formed in the previous years of exclusion. A slight
examination of facts, such as can be furnished by any librarian of
experience in a circulating public library, will show how little force
there is in this objection.
Nor should it be forgotten, in considering this question, that to very
many young people youth is the time when they have more leisure for
reading than any other portion of life is likely to furnish. At the age of
twelve or fourteen, or even earlier, they are set at work to earn their
living, and thereafter their opportunities for culture are but slight, nor
are their circumstances such as to encourage them in such a work. We
cannot begin too early to give them a bent towards culture which shall
abide by them and raise them above the work-a-day world which will
demand so large a share of their time and strength. The mechanic, the
farmer, the man in any walk of life, who has early formed good habits
of reading, is the one who will magnify his calling, and occupy the
highest positions in it. And to the thousands of young people, in whose

homes there is none of the atmosphere of culture or of the appliances
for it, the public library ought to furnish the means of keeping pace
intellectually with the more favored children of homes where good
books abound and their