Part of an address by President Angell of the University of
Michigan--educator, diplomat and statesman--at the
dedication of the Ryerson Library Building in Grand Rapids,
Mich., Oct. 8, 1904. To advise a reader, Pres. Angell
thinks, one must know something of his personal aptitudes.
General advice about "good reading" is seldom of great
service. A modern note by a great man.
James Burrill Angell was born in Scituate, R.I., Jan. 7,
1829, graduated at Brown University, and after studying
abroad, became eminent as an educator, holding first a
professorship in his alma mater and then serving
successively as president of the Universities of Vermont and
Michigan. He was U.S. minister to China in 1880-81 and
served on important international commissions. His works on
international law and on education are standard. He died on
April 1, 1916.
Now that your benefactor has so nobly done his part, it remains for the
city to see that the library is maintained and managed in an effective
manner. It would not only be an act of ingratitude, but it would be a
mockery, if in such an edifice as this we should not find a good and
growing and well administered library. There is no more important
commission in your city than the commission charged with the care of
your library. Let us hope that they will always be chosen with special
regard to their fitness for their official duty and without regard to
their party affiliations.
Especially is wisdom needed in the selection of your books. It is not
so difficult to choose books for the cultivated and scholarly readers.
But in a city library you must provide for all your population.
Particular care should be had to procure books attractive and useful to
your artisans and mechanics and common laborers. They should be led to
feel that this is the place where they can most profitably spend a spare
hour and can find something to bring new brightness into their
monotonous lives. The efforts which you have already initiated to make
the library serviceable to the pupils in your schools must now be
redoubled. The teachers and the library authorities must always contrive
to cooperate heartily. The multiplication of libraries in this country
has already elevated the work of the librarian to the dignity of a
distinct profession. And no profession promises to be more useful. In
addition to the proper organization and care of the library, the
influence which a competent librarian can wield in his guidance of the
reading and studies of the young is seldom outweighed by that of the
teacher or the preacher. In no manner can a generous appropriation of
funds for the support of a library be more wisely expended than in
securing a competent librarian.
Judging by my own experience and by my observation of others, I doubt
whether the guide books which have been written to tell one what works
to read have been of great service. The simple reason why they are not
very helpful is that to advise one what to read, you should know
something of his aptitudes and taste and something of his plans of life.
General advice is a shot in the air. It may hit nothing.
But a competent person may give helpful counsels to the young
concerning useful methods of reading whatever one does read, and may
indeed specify what are some of the best books on certain topics. A good
librarian, if leisure enough is left him, may attract and help willing
auditors by occasional lectures or informal talks on how to read in a
library. But personal suggestions, to meet particular needs, are the
most fruitful of good. And just here the school teachers, if competent
to advise, can be of the utmost service. In no way can the library be
made so valuable as by the hearty and systematic co-operation of the
librarian and the teachers. It would be very useful if they could from
time to time meet to confer upon the best methods of securing harmonious
action. For it is the generation now coming on to the stage who are
chiefly to profit by the use of this library. It is through them that
the city is to receive its chief benefit. To incite them to read, to
train them to right habits of reading, to inspire them with high ideals
of what one should seek and love in reading, should be the aspiration of
parents and teachers, if this library is to yield its largest harvest of
good.
Like all good things, this library may to some persons bring no good; it
may even be made an instrument of harm. It may bring no good, because it
may be utterly neglected. No doubt there are many families who have
never drawn a book from its shelves. It may bring no good, it may even
cause intellectual, not to say moral injury, if it is misused. It is
possible to choose from any great library such passages from works and
to peruse them in such a spirit as to gratify and stimulate prurient
desires, or if one does not descend to so unworthy and shameful an act,
one may read in such a manner as to be guilty of intellectual
dissipation. What we may call the desultory readers are exposed to this
danger. They pick up whatever book or magazine comes first to hand,
provided they are sure that it makes no tax upon their mental powers.
They spend their time dawdling over a chapter of this book, then over a
chapter of that, as men of the town now join this gay companion for an
hour and then another for the next hour for frivolous talk and
profitless gossip, and so wander aimless through the day without any
fruitage to show for their time. They lose the power, if they ever had
it, of consecutive study and thought and discourse on any theme
whatever.
I do not mean to intimate that we should never come to this library to
read for pleasure and entertainment. One of the great and proper uses of
books is to refresh and amuse us in our hours of weariness and
depression. Like the society of our choicest friends, they may wisely be
sought for the sole purpose of diverting our minds from the flood of
cares and troubles which come in upon all of us. The library may well be
"The world's sweet inn from care and wearisome turmoil."
Or in our happy and merry moods we may seek congenial company in the
creations of Cervantes and Moliere and Shakespeare and Dickens and Mark
Twain. Reading for pastime is a commendable occupation, if wisely
followed. Lowell in his paradoxical style tells us that what Dr. Johnson
called browsing in a library is the only way in which time can be
profitably wasted. But to browse profitably one should have an appetite
only for what has some merit. I have known lads born with a literary
instinct as unerring as that of the bee for finding honey, to have the
free run of a large library and come out with a wonderful range of good
learning. Such instances show the unwisdom of having the same rules to
guide every one in his reading. In such cases as those just cited, the
example and taste of the parents often determine the success of the
experiment. The books they talk about fondly at table and quote from
freely and appositely are likely to arrest the attention of the child.
Therefore we may say that the home as truly as the school may largely
determine what advantage shall be gained in this library. Parents who
for their children's sake are careful what guests they admit to their
house and what companionships they counsel the children to form may well
consider what reading comes under their roof and what literary tastes
they encourage in their household.
In these days when reviews and magazines and school histories of
literature abound, there seems ground for one caution to youthful
readers. It is, not to be content with reading about great books and
great men, but to study the works themselves of great men. Many of the
outlines of English literature, for example, which pupils in school are
required to study, contain dates and names and brief descriptions of
masterpieces, and from the nature of the case can contain little else.
But cramming the memory with these is not learning the literature.
Reading, mastering, and learning to appreciate and love the great works
of a great author is better than to learn the dry facts in the lives of
a score of authors. So our magazines and reviews treat us to criticism
sometimes wise, sometimes unwise, of many authors. But all these are of
little value until the works themselves of the authors have been
studied. With the works the biographies of the authors should be read in
order to appreciate the conditions under which the works were produced.
But far better is it to gain a thorough acquaintance with one great
writer's life and works than to learn a few fragmentary facts at second
hand about the lives and writings of many.
One of the most difficult questions to settle in these days in the
selection of books for a library or in directing the reading of the
young is, how large shall be the proportion of fiction in a library or
in the reading of any one. Just now we are flooded with fiction,
stretching from the short story of the magazine to the two-volume novel.
I observe that nearly two-thirds of the volumes drawn from this library
in 1901-02 are classed under the two heads of juvenile fiction and
fiction. And I suppose the experience of other popular libraries is
similar to yours. This shows at least that there is a great craving for
fiction. That craving a library like this must to a fair degree strive
to meet. Nor need we regret that there is a strong desire for sterling
works of fiction. They stimulate and nourish the imagination. They give
us vivid pictures of life. They portray for us the working of human
passions. They give a reality to history. Sometimes they cultivate a
taste for reading in those who would otherwise be inclined to read
little, and so lead them to other branches of literature. But, on the
other hand, I think it must be confessed that a great deal of the
fiction which is deluging the market is the veriest trash, or worse than
trash. Much of it is positively bad in its influence. It awakens morbid
passions. It deals in most exaggerated representations of life. It is
vicious in style.
It is a most delicate task for the authorities of a library like this to
draw the line between the works of fiction which should be and those
which should not be found on its shelves. As to the individual reader,
the best we can do is to elevate his taste as rapidly as we can by
placing in his hands fiction attractive at once in its matter and in its
style. We must hope that with the cultivation of taste to which our best
schools aspire, we can rear a generation which will prefer the best
things in literature to the inferior. That is the reason why the
teachers of languages and literature in our schools should be not mere
linguists, but persons of refined literary taste, who will imbue their
pupils with a love for the truest and highest in every literature which
they can read.
I would like to commend to my young friends who desire to profit by
the use of this library the habit of reading with some system and of
making brief notes upon the contents of the books they read. If, for
instance, you are studying the history of some period, ascertain what
works you need to study and finish such parts of them as concern your
theme. Do not feel obliged to read the whole of a large treatise, but
select such chapters as touch on the subject in hand, and omit the rest
for the time. Young students often get swamped and lose their way in
Serbonian bogs of learning, when they need to explore only a simple and
plain pathway to a specific destination. Have a purpose and a plan and
adhere to it in spite of alluring temptations to turn aside into
attractive fields that are remote from your subject. If in a note book
you will on finishing a work jot down the points of importance in the
volume and the references to the page or chapter, you will frequently
find it of the greatest service to run over these notes and refresh your
memory. If you are disposed to add some words of comment or criticism on
the book, that practice also will make you a more attractive reader, and
will make an interesting record for you to consult.