A LIBRARIAN'S OPEN SHELF
ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS
ARTHUR E. BOSTWICK, Ph.D.
1920
PREFACE
The papers here gathered together represent the activities of a librarian
in directions outside the boundaries of his professional career, although
the influences of it may be detected in them here and there. Except for
those influences they have little connection and the transition of thought
and treatment from one to another may occasionally seem violent. It may,
however, serve to protect the reader from the assaults of monotony.
A.E.B.
CONTENTS
DO READERS READ?
(_The Critic_, July, 1901, p. 67-70)
WHAT MAKES PEOPLE READ?
(_The Book Lover_, January, 1904, p. 12-16)
THE PASSING OF THE POSSESSIVE; A STUDY OF BOOK TITLES
(_The Book Buyer_, June, 1897, p. 500-1)
SELECTIVE EDUCATION
(_Educational Review_, November, 1907, p. 365-73)
THE USES OF FICTION
Read before the American Library Association, Asheville Conference,
May 28, 1907. (_A.L.A. Bulletin_, July, 1907, p. 183-7)
THE VALUE OF ASSOCIATION
Delivered before the Library Associations of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas,
Missouri, Indiana and Ohio, October 9-18, 1907. (_Library Journal_,
January, 1908, p. 3-9)
MODERN EDUCATIONAL METHODS
(_Notes and News_, Montclair, N.J., July, 1908)
SOME ECONOMIC FEATURES OF LIBRARIES
Read at the opening of the Chestnut Hill Branch, Philadelphia Free
Library, January 22, 1909. (_Library Journal_, February, 1909, p.
48-52)
SIMON NEWCOMB: AMERICA'S FOREMOST ASTRONOMER
(_Review of Reviews_, August, 1909, p. 171-4)
THE COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
Read before the Pacific Northwest Library Association, June, 1910.
(_P.N.W.L.A. Proceedings_, 1910, p. 8-23)
ATOMIC THEORIES OF ENERGY
Read before the St. Louis Academy of Science. (_The Monist_,
October, 1912, p. 580-5)
THE ADVERTISEMENT OF IDEAS
(_Minnesota Library Notes and News_, December, 1912, p. 190-7)
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, THE PUBLIC SCHOOL, AND THE SOCIAL CENTER MOVEMENT
Read before the National Education Association. (_N.E.A.
Proceedings_, 1912, p. 240-5)
THE SYSTEMATIZATION OF VIOLENCE
(_St. Louis Mirror_, July 18, 1913)
THE ART OF RE-READING
HISTORY AND HEREDITY
Read before the New England Society of St. Louis. (_New England
Society of St. Louis_. _Proceedings_, 29th year, p. 13-20)
WHAT THE FLAG STANDS FOR
A Flag Day address in St. Peter's church, St. Louis. (_St. Louis
Republic_, June 15, 1914)
THE PEOPLE'S SHARE IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
Read before the Chicago Women's Club, January 6, 1915. (_Library
Journal_, April, 1915, p. 227-32)
SOME TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN THOUGHT
Read before the New York Library Association at Squirrel Inn, Haines
Falls, September 28, 1915. (_Library Journal_, November, 1915, p.
771-7)
DRUGS AND THE MAN
A Commencement address to the graduating class of the School of
Pharmacy, St. Louis, May 19, 1915. (_Journal of the American
Pharmaceutical Association_, August, 1915, p. 915-22)
HOW THE COMMUNITY EDUCATES ITSELF
Read before the American Library Association, Asbury Park, N.J.,
June 27, 1916. (_Library Journal_, August, 1916, p. 541-7)
CLUBWOMEN'S READING
(_The Bookman_, January-March, 1915, p. 515-21, 642-7, 64-70)
BOOKS FOR TIRED EYES
(_Yale Review_, January, 1917, p. 358-68)
THE MAGIC CASEMENT
Read before the Town and Gown Club, St. Louis.
A WORD TO BELIEVERS
Address at the closing section of the Church School of Religious
Instruction.
INDEX
A LIBRARIAN'S OPEN SHELF
ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS
DO READERS READ?
Those who are interested in the proper use of our libraries are asking
continually, "What do readers read?" and the tables of class-percentages
in the annual reports of those institutions show that librarians are at
least making an attempt to satisfy these queries. But a question that is
still more fundamental and quite as vital is: Do readers read at all? This
is not a paradox, but a common-sense question, as the following suggestive
little incident will show. The librarian-in-charge of a crowded branch
circulating-library in New York City had occasion to talk, not long ago,
to one of her "star" borrowers, a youth who had taken out his two good
books a week regularly for nearly a year and whom she had looked upon as a
model--so much so that she had never thought it necessary to advise with
him regarding his reading. In response to a question this lad made answer
somewhat as follows: "Yes, ma'am, I'm doing pretty well with my reading. I
think I should get on nicely if I could only once manage to read a book
through; but somehow I can't seem to do it." This boy had actually taken
to his home nearly a hundred books, returning each regularly and borrowing
another, without reading to the end of a single one of them.
That this case is not isolated and abnormal, but is typical of the way in
which a large class of readers treat books, there is, as we shall see,
only too much reason to believe.
The facts are peculiarly hard to get at. At first sight there would seem
to be no way to find out whether the books that our libraries circulate
have been read through from cover to cover, or only half through, or not
at all. To be sure, each borrower might be questioned on the subject as he
returned his book, but this method, would be resented as inquisitorial,
and after all there would be no certainty that the data so gathered were
true. By counting the stamps on the library book-card or dating-slip we
can tell how many times a book has been borrowed, but this gives us no
information about whether it has or has not been read. Fortunately for our
present purpose, however, many works are published in a series of volumes,
each of which is charged separately, and an examination of the different
slips will tell us whether or not the whole work has been read through by
all those who borrowed it. If, for instance in a two-volume work each
volume has gone out twenty times, twenty borrowers either have read it
through or have stopped somewhere in the second volume, while if the first
volume is charged twenty times and the second only fourteen, it is certain
that six of those who took out the first volume did not get as far as the
second. In works of more than two volumes we can tell with still greater
accuracy at what point the reader's interest was insufficient to carry him
further.
Such an investigation has been made of all works in more than one volume
contained in seven branches of the Brooklyn Public Library, and with very
few exceptions it has been found that each successive volume in a series
has been read by fewer persons than the one immediately preceding. What is
true of books in more than one volume is presumably also true, although
perhaps in a less degree, of one-volume works, although we have no means
of showing it directly. Among the readers of every book, then, there are
generally some who, for one reason or other, do not read it to the end.
Our question, "Do readers read?" is thus answered in the negative for a
large number of cases. The supplementary question, "Why do not readers
read?" occurs at once, but an attempt to answer it would take us rather
too deeply into psychology. Whether this tendency to leave the latter part
of books unread is increasing or not we can tell only by repeating the
present investigation at intervals of a year or more. The probability is
that it is due to pure lack of interest. For some reason or other, many
persons begin to read books that fail to hold their attention. In a large
number of cases this is doubtless due to a feeling that one "ought to
read" certain books and certain classes of books. A sense of duty carries
the reader part way through his task, but he weakens before he has
finished it.
This shows how necessary it is to stimulate one's general interest in a
subject before advising him to read a book that is not itself calculated
to arouse and sustain that interest. Possibly the modern newspaper habit,
with its encouragement of slipshod reading, may play its part in producing
the general result, and doubtless a careful detailed investigation would
reveal still other partial causes, but the chief and determining cause
must be lack of interest. And it is to be feared that instead of taking
measures to arouse a permanent interest in good literature, which would in
itself lead to the reading of standard works and would sustain the reader
until he had finished his task, we have often tried to replace such an
interest by a fictitious and temporary stimulus, due to appeals to duty,
or to that vague and confused idea that one should "improve one's mind,"
unaccompanied by any definite plan of ways and means. There is no more
powerful moral motor than duty, but it loses its force when we try to
apply it to cases that lie without the province of ethics. The man who has
no permanent interest in historical literature, and who is impelled to
begin a six-volume history because he conceives it to be his "duty" to
read it, is apt to conclude, before he has finished the second volume,
that his is a case where inclination (or in this instance disinclination)
is the proper guide.
As a matter of fact, the formation of a cultivated and permanent taste for
good reading is generally a matter of lifelong education. It must be begun
when the child reads his first book. An encouraging sign for the future is
the care that is now taken in all good libraries to supervise the reading
of children and to provide for them special quarters and facilities. A
somewhat disheartening circumstance, on the other hand, is the
multiplication of annotated and abbreviated children's editions of all
sorts of works that were read by the last generation of children without
any such treatment. This kind of boned chicken may be very well for the
mental invalid, but the ordinary child prefers to separate his meat from
the "drumstick" by his own unaided effort, and there is no doubt that it
is better for him to do so.
In the following table, the average circulation of first volumes, second
volumes, etc., is given for each of seven classes of works. The falling
off from volume to volume is noticeable in each class. It is most marked
in science, and least so, as might be expected, in fiction. Yet it is
remarkable that there should be any falling off at all in fiction. The
record shows that the proportion of readers who cannot even read to the
end of a novel is relatively large. These are doubtless the good people
who speak of Dickens as "solid reading" and who regard Thackeray with as
remote an eye as they do Gibbon. For such "The Duchess" furnishes good
mental pabulum, and Miss Corelli provides flights into the loftier regions
of philosophy.
Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol.
CLASS I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII IX. X. XI. XII.
History 10.1 6.9 4.9 4.4 4.6 4.3 2.5 2.8 1.0 0.5 1.0 3.0
Biography 7.2 5.1 3.0 2.3 1.6 1.0 1.6 1.2 1.0 2.
Travel 9.2 7.9
Literature 7.3 5.9 3.5 3.8 5.3 6.6 19.0 15.0 21.0
Arts 4.7 3.7 3.0
Sciences 5.2 2.7 1.5
Fiction 22.0 18.9 15.8 16. 26. 16.
The figures in the table, as has been stated, are averages, and the number
of cases averaged decreases rapidly as we reach the later volumes,
because, of course, the number of works that run beyond four or five
volumes is relatively small. Hence the figures for the higher volumes are
irregular. Any volume may have been withdrawn separately for reference
without any intention of reading its companions. Among the earlier volumes
such use counts for little, owing to the large number of volumes averaged,
while it may and does make the figures for the later volumes irregular.
Thus, under History the high number in the twelfth column represents
one-twelfth volume of Froude, which was taken out three times, evidently
for separate reference, as the eleventh was withdrawn but once.
Furthermore, apart from this irregularity, the figures for the later
volumes are relatively large, for a work in many volumes is apt to be a
standard, and although its use falls rapidly from start to finish enough
readers persevere to the end to make the final averages compare unduly
well with the initial ones where the high use of the same work is averaged
in with smaller use of dozens of other first and second volumes. That the
falling off from beginning to end in such long works is much more striking
than would appear from the averages alone may be seen from the following
records of separate works in numerous volumes:
VOLUMES
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X
HISTORY
Grote, "Greece" 11 6 5 2 1 0 1 1 1 0
Bancroft, "United States" 22 10 6 8 10 8
Hume, "England" 24 7 5 2 1 1
Gibbon, "Rome" 38 12 7 3 4 6
Motley, "United Netherlands" 7 1 1 1
Prescott, "Ferdinand and
Isabella" 20 4 2
Carlyle, "French Revolution" 18 10 8
McCarthy, "Our Own Times" 27 8 11
BIOGRAPHY
Bourienne, "Memoirs of
Napoleon" 19 18 9 7
Longfellow's "Life" 6 4 2
Nicolay and Hay, "Lincoln" 6 3 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 2
Carlyle, "Frederick the
Great" 7 3 2 2 2
FICTION
Dumas, "Vicomte de
Bragelonne" 31 30 24 22 21 16
Dumas, "Monte Cristo" 27 17 18
Dickens, "Our Mutual Friend" 5 4 1 0
Stowe, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 37 24
Of course, these could be multiplied indefinitely. They are sufficiently
interesting apart from all comment. One would hardly believe without
direct evidence that of thirty-one persons who began one of Dumas's
romances scarcely half would read it to the end, or that not one of five
persons who essayed Dickens's "Mutual Friend" would succeed in getting
through it.
Those who think that there can be no pathos in statistics are invited to
ponder this table deeply. Can anyone think unmoved of those two dozen
readers who, feeling impelled by desire for an intellectual stimulant to
take up Hume, found therein a soporific instead and fell by the wayside?
A curious fact is that the tendency to attempt to "begin at the beginning"
is so strong that it sometimes extends to collected works in which there
is no sequence from volume to volume. Thus we have the following:
Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol.
I. II. III. IV. V. VI.
Chaucer, "Poetical Works" 38 9 5
Milton, "Poetical Works" 19 8
Longfellow, "Poetical Works" 14 15 2 10 3 3
Emerson, "Essays" 48 13
Ward, "English Poets" 13 2 6
There are of course exceptions to the rule that circulation decreases
steadily from volume to volume. Here are a few:
Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol.
I. II. III. IV.
Fiske, "Old Virginia" 26 24
Spears, "History of the Navy" 44 39 36 36
Andrews, "Last Quarter Century" 8 8
Kennan, "Siberia" 15 13
In the case of the two-volume works the interest-sustaining power may not
always be as great as would appear, because when the reader desires it,
two volumes are given out as one; but the stamps on the dating-slips show
that this fact counted for little in the present instances.
I would not assume that the inferences in the present article are of any
special value. The statistical facts are the thing. So far as I know, no
one has called attention to them before, and they are certainly worthy of
all interest and attention.
WHAT MAKES PEOPLE READ?
Does the reading public read because it has a literary taste or for some
other reason? In the case of the public library, for instance, does a man
start with an overwhelming desire to read or study books and is he
impelled thereby to seek out the place where he may most easily and best
obtain them? Or is he primarily attracted to the library by some other
consideration, his love for books and reading acting only in a secondary
manner? The New York Public Library, for instance, carries on the registry
books of its circulating department nearly 400,000 names, and in the
course of a year nearly 35,000 new applications are made for the use of
its branch libraries, scattered over different parts of the city. What
brings these people to the library? This is no idle question. The number
of library users, large as it is, represents too small a fraction of our
population. If it is a good thing to provide free reading matter for our
people--and every large city in the country has committed itself to the
truth of this proposition--we should certainly try to see that what we
furnish is used by all who need it. Hence an examination into the motives
that induce people to make their first use of a free public library may
bring out information that is not only interesting but useful. To this end
several hundred regular users of the branches of the New York Public
Library were recently asked this question directly, and the answers are
tabulated and discussed below. In each of sixteen branch libraries the
persons interrogated numbered forty--ten each of men, women, boys and
girls. Thirty answers have been thrown out for irrelevancy or
defectiveness. The others are classified in the following table:
A B C D E F G H I J K L Totals
Men 6 64 10 .. .. .. 37 20 3 1 9 4 154
Boys 38 63 28 .. 4 3 9 6 5 .. .. 3 159
Women 12 67 14 4 .. .. 20 21 2 1 2 5 148
Girls 33 69 34 .. .. .. 5 3 3 .. .. 2 149
Total 89 263 86 4 4 3 71 50 13 2 11 14 610
Col. A: Sent or Told by Teacher
Col. B: Sent or Told by Friend
Col. C: Sent or Told by Relative
Col. D: Sent or Told by Clergyman
Col. E: Sent or Told by Library Assistant
Col. F: Through Reading Room
Col. G: Saw Building
Col. H: Saw Sign
Col. I: Saw Library Books
Col. J: Saw Bulletin
Col. K: Saw Article in Paper
Col. L: Sought Library
It will be seen that the vast majority of those questioned were led to the
library by some circumstance other than the simple desire to find a place
where books could be obtained. Of more than six hundred persons whose
answers are here recorded only fourteen found the library as the result of
a direct search for it prompted by a desire to read. In a majority of the
other cases, of course, perhaps in all of them, the desire to read had its
part, but this desire was awakened by hearing a mention of the library or
by seeing it or something connected with it. These determining
circumstances fall into two classes, those that worked through the ear and
those that operated through the eye.
Those who _heard_ of the library in some way numbered 449, while those who
_saw_ it or something connected with it were only 147--an interesting
fact, especially as we are told by psychologists that apprehension and
memory through sight are of a higher type than the same functions where
exercised through hearing. Probably, however, this difference was
dependent on the fact that the thing heard was in most cases a direct
injunction or a piece of advice, while the thing seen did not act with
similar urgency. There are some surprises in the table. For instance, only
four persons were sent directly to libraries by persons employed therein.
Doubtless the average library assistant wishes to get as far from "shop"
as possible in her leisure hours, but it is still disappointing to find
that those who are employed in our libraries exercise so little influence
in bringing persons to use them. The same thing is true of the influence
of reading rooms. In many of the branch libraries in New York there are
separate reading rooms to which others than card-holders in the library
are admitted, and one of the chief arguments for this has been that the
user of such a room, having become accustomed to resort to the library
building, would be apt to use the books. Apparently, however, such persons
are in the minority. No less disappointing is the slight influence of the
clergy. Only four persons report this as a determining influence and these
were all women connected with a branch which was formerly the parish
library of a New York church.
The influence of the press, too, seems to amount to little, in spite of
the fact that the newspapers in New York have freely commented on the
valuable work of the branch libraries and have called attention to it both
in the news and editorial columns whenever occasion offered. Do the
readers of library books in New York shun the public-press, or do they pay
scant heed to what they read therein?
Another somewhat noteworthy fact is that of the 449 persons who sought the
library by advice of some one, only 89 were sent by teachers. But perhaps
this is unfair. Of 265 boys and girls who thus came to the library, only
71 were sent by teachers. This is a larger percentage, but it is still not
so large as we might expect.
The difference between adults and children comes out quite strikingly in a
few instances. We should have foreseen this of course in the case of
advice by teachers, which was reported by 71 children and only 18 adults
as a reason for visiting the library. Here we should not have expected
this reason to be given by adults at all. Doubtless these were chiefly
young men and women who had used the library since their school-days. In
like manner the advice or injunction of relatives was more patent with
children than with adults, the proportion here being 62 to 24. This
probably illustrates the power of parental injunction. In another case the
difference comes out in a wholly unexpected way. Of the 71 persons who
reported that they were attracted to the library by seeing the buildings,
57 were adults and only 14 children. The same is true of those who were
led in by seeing a sign, who numbered 41 adults to only 9 children. This
seems to show either that adults are more observant or that children are
more diffident in following out an impulse of this kind. It completely
negatives the ordinary impression among librarians, at least in New York,
where it has been believed that the sight of a library building,
especially where the work going on inside is visible from the street, is a
potent attraction to the young. Some of the new branch buildings in New
York have even been planned with a special view to the exercise of this
kind of attraction.
The small number of persons who were attracted by printed matter, in
library or general publications, were entirely adults. The one instance
where age seems to exercise no particular influence is that of the advice
of friends, by which old and young alike seem to have profited.
The influence of sex does not appear clearly, although among those who
followed the injunction of relatives the women and girls are slightly in
the majority, and the four who were sent by clergymen were all women. Of
those who were attracted by the buildings 46 were male and 25 female,
which may mean that men are somewhat more observant or less diffident than
women.
A few of those questioned relate their experiences at some length. Says
one boy: "A boy friend of mine said he belonged to this library and he
found some very good books here. He asked me if I wanted to join; I said
yes. He told me I would have to get a reference. I got one, and joined
this library." Another one reports: "I saw a boy in the street and asked
him where he was going. He said he was going to the library. I asked him
what the library was and he told me; so I came up here and have been
coming ever since."
Critical judgment is shown by some of the young people. One boy says: "I
heard all the other boys saying it was a good library and that the books
were better kept than in a majority of libraries." A girl says that
friends "told her what nice books were in this library." In one case a
boy's brother "told him he could get the best books here for his needs."
The combination of man and book seems to be very attractive. One child
"saw a boy in school with a book, telling what a boy should know about
electricity; I wanted to read that book and joined the library." Others
"followed a crowd of little boys with books"; "saw children taking books
out of the building and asked them about joining"; "saw a boy carrying
books and asked if there was a library in the neighborhood." A woman "saw
a child with a library book in the park and asked her for the address of
the library." Sometimes the book alone does the work, as shown by the
following laconic report: "Found a book in the park; took it to the
library; joined it." A cause of sorrow to many librarians who have decided
ideas regarding literature for children will be the report of a boy who
exclaimed: "Horatio Alger did it!" On being asked to explain, he said that
a friend had brought one of Alger's books to his house and that he was
thereby attracted to the library.
Among those who were brought in by relatives are children who were first
carried by their mothers to the library as infants and so grew naturally
into its use. Sometimes the influence works upward instead of downward,
for several adults report that their children brought them to the library
or induced them to visit it. One man reports that he "got married and his
wife induced him to come."
Some of the reasons given are curious. A few are unconnected with the use
of books. One girl came to the library because "it was a very handy
library"; another, because she "saw it was a nice place to come to on a
rainy day." Still another frankly avows that "it was the fad among the
boys and girls of our neighborhood; we used to meet at the library." A
postman reported that he entered the library first in the line of his
duty, but was attracted by it and began to take out books. A clergyman had
his attention called to the library by requests from choir-boys that he
should sign their application blanks; afterwards thinking that he might
find books there for his own reading, he became a regular user. One user
came first to the library to see an exhibition of pictures of old New
York. A recent importation says: "When I came from Paris I found all my
cousins speaking English; 'well,' they said, 'go to the library and take
books'"--a process that doubtless did its share toward making an American
of the new arrival. In another case, the Americanizing process has not yet
reached the stage where the user's English is altogether intelligible. He
says: "Because I like to read the book. I ask the bakery lady to my
reference and I sing my neam" [sign my name?].
Here are some examples of recently acquired elegance in diction that are
almost baboo-like in their hopelessness: "Because it interest about the
countries that are far away. It gives knowledge to many of the people in
this country." "So as to obtain knowledge from them and by reading books
find out how the great men were in their former days and all about them
and the world and its people." It will be seen that the last two writers
were among those who misunderstood our questions and told why they read
books rather than how they were first led to the use of a library.
These reports are far from possessing merely a passing interest for the
curious. For the public librarian, whose wish it is to reach as large a
proportion of the public as possible, they are full of valuable hints.
They emphasize, for instance, the urgent necessity of winning the good
will of the public, and they forcibly remind us that this is of more value
in gaining a foothold for the library than columns of notices in the
papers or thousands of circulars or cards distributed in the neighborhood.
It is even more potent than a beautiful building. Attractive as this is,
its value as an influence to secure new readers is vastly less than a
reputation for hospitality and helpfulness.
In looking over the figures one rather disquieting thought cannot be kept
down. If the good will of the public is so potent in increasing the use of
the library, the ill will of the same public must be equally potent in the
opposite direction. Some of those who are satisfied with us and our work
are here put on record. How about the dissatisfied? A record of these
might be even more interesting, for it would point out weaknesses to be
strengthened and errors to be avoided--but that, as Kipling says, "is
another story."
THE PASSING OF THE POSSESSIVE: A STUDY OF BOOK-TITLES
If there is one particular advantage possessed by the Teutonic over the
Romance languages in idiomatic clearness and precision it is that
conferred by their ownership of a possessive case, almost the sole
remaining monument to the fact that our ancestors spoke an inflected
tongue. That we should still be able to speak of "the baker's wife's dog"
instead of "the dog of the wife of the baker" certainly should be regarded
by English-speaking people as a precious birthright. Yet, there are
increasing evidences of a tendency to discard this only remaining
case-ending and to replace its powerful backbone with the comparatively
limp and cartilaginous preposition. This tendency has not yet appeared so
much in our spoken as in our written language, and even here only in the
most formal parts of it. It is especially noticeable in the diction of the
purely formal title and heading.
That the reader may have something beyond an unsupported assertion that
this is the case, I purpose to offer in evidence the titles of some recent
works of fiction, and to make a brief statistical study of them.
The titles were taken from the adult fiction lists in the Monthly
Bulletins of the New York Free Circulating Library from November, 1895, to
March, 1897, inclusive, and are all such titles as contain a possessive,
whether expressed by the possessive case or by the preposition "of" with
the objective. Some titles are included in which the grammatical relation
is slightly different, but all admit the alternative of the case-ending
"'s" or "of" followed by the objective case.
Of the 101 titles thus selected, 41 use the possessive case and 60 the
objective with the preposition. This proportion is in itself sufficiently
suggestive, but it becomes still more so by comparing it with the
corresponding proportion among a different set of titles. For this purpose
101 fiction titles were selected, just as they appeared in alphabetical
order, from a library catalogue bearing the date 1889; only those being
taken, as before, that contain a possessive. Of these 101, 71 use the
possessive case and 30 the objective with "of." In other words, where
eight years ago nearly three-quarters of such titles used the possessive
case, now only two-fifths use it, a proportionate reduction of nearly
one-half.
The change appears still more striking when we study the titles a little
more closely. Of those in the earlier series there is not one that is not
good, idiomatic English as it stands, whichever form is used; we may even
say that there is not one that would not be made less idiomatic by a
change to the alternative form. Among the recent titles, however, while
the forms using the possessive case are all better as they are, of the 60
titles that use the objective with "of" only 22 would be injured by a
change, and the reason why 8 of these are better as they are is simply
that change would destroy euphony. Among these eight are
"The Indiscretion of the Duchess,"
"The Flight of a Shadow,"
"The Secret of Narcisse," etc.,
where the more idiomatic forms,
"The Duchess's Indiscretion,"
"Narcisse's Secret,"
"A Shadow's Flight," etc.,
are certainly not euphonic.
Of the others, 8 would not be injured by a change, and no less than 30
would be improved from the standpoint of idiomatic English. It may be well
to quote these thirty titles. They are:
"The Shadow of Hilton Fernbrook,"
"The Statement of Stella Maberly,"
"The Shadow of John Wallace,"
"The Banishment of Jessop Blythe,"
"The Desire of the Moth,"
"The Island of Dr. Moreau,"
"The Damnation of Theron Ware,"
"The Courtship of Morrice Buckler,"
"The Daughter of a Stoic,"
"The Lament of Dives,"
"The Heart of Princess Osra,"
"The Death of the Lion,"
"The Vengeance of James Vansittart,"
"The Wife of a Vain Man,"
"The Crime of Henry Vane,"
"The Son of Old Harry,"
"The Honour of Savelli,"
"The Life of Nancy,"
"The Story of Lawrence Garthe,"
"The Marriage of Esther,"
"The House of Martha,"
"Tales of an Engineer,"
"Love-letters of a Worldly Woman,"
"The Way of a Maid,"
"The Soul of Pierre,"
"The Day of Their Wedding,"
"The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard,"
"The Hand of Ethelberta,"
"The Failure of Sibyl Fletcher,"
"The Love-affairs of an Old Maid."
Of course, in such a division as this, much must depend on individual
judgment and bias. Probably no two persons would divide the list in just
the same way, but it is my belief that the general result in each case
would be much the same. To me the possessive in every one of the
above-quoted titles would have been more idiomatic, thus:
"Hilton Fernbrook's Shadow,"
"Stella Maberly's Statement,"
"John Wallace's Shadow,"
"Morrice Buckler's Courtship,"
"A Stoic's Daughter,"
"Henry Vane's Crime," etc., etc.
In one case, at least, this fact has been recognized by a publisher, for
"The Vengeance of James Vansittart," whose title is included in the list
given above, has appeared in a later edition as "James Vansittart's
Vengeance"--a palpable improvement.
I shall not discuss the cause of this change in the use of the possessive,
though it seems to me an evident Gallicism, nor shall I open the question
of whether it is a mere passing fad or the beginning of an actual
alteration in the language. However this may be, it seems undeniable that
there is an actual and considerable difference in the use of the
possessive to-day and its use ten years ago, at least in formal titles and
headings. I have confined myself to book-titles, because that is the
department where the tendency presents itself to me most clearly; but it
may be seen on street signs, in advertisements, and in newspaper headings.
It is not to be found yet in the spoken language, at least it is not
noticeable there, but it would be decidedly unsafe to prophesy that it
will never appear there. Ten years from now we may hear about "the
breaking of the arm of John Smith" and "the hat of Tom," without a thought
that these phrases have not been part of our idiomatic speech since
Shakespeare's time.
SELECTIVE EDUCATION[1]
[1] Read before the Schoolmen of New York.
Since Darwin called attention to the role of what he named "natural
selection" in the genesis and preservation of species, and since his
successors, both followers and opponents, have added to this many other
kinds of selection that are continually operative, it has become
increasingly evident that from one standpoint we may look on the sum of
natural processes, organic and inorganic, as a vast selective system, as
the result of which things are as they are, whether the results are the
positions of celestial bodies or the relative places of human beings in
the intellectual or social scale. The exact constitution of the present
population of New York is the result of a great number of selective acts,
some regular, others more or less haphazard. Selection is no less
selection because it occurs by what we call chance--for chance is only our
name for the totality of trivial and unconsidered causes. When, however,
we count man and man's efforts in the sum of natural objects and forces,
we have to reckon with his intelligence in these selective processes. I
desire to call attention to the place that they play in educative systems
and in particular to the way in which they may be furthered or made more
effective by books, especially by public collections of books.
When we think of any kind of training as it affects the individual, we
most naturally regard it as changing that individual, as making him more
fit, either for life in general or for some special form of life's
activities. But when we think of it as affecting a whole community or a
whole nation, we may regard it as essentially a selective process. In a
given community it is not only desirable that a certain number of men
should be trained to do a specified kind of work, but it is even more
desirable that these should be the men that are best fitted to do this
work. When Mr. Luther Burbank brings into play the selection by means of
which he achieves his remarkable results in plant breeding he gets rid of
the unfit by destruction, and as all are unfit for the moment that do not
advance the special end that he has in view, he burns up plants--new and
interesting varieties perhaps--by the hundred thousand. We cannot destroy
the unfit, nor do we desire to do so, for from the educational point of
view unfitness is merely bad adjustment. There is a place for every man in
the world and it is the educator's business to see that he reaches it, if
not by formative, then by selective processes. This selection is badly
made in our present state of civilization. It depends to a large extent
upon circumstances remote from the training itself--upon caprice, either
that of the person to be trained or of his parents, upon accidents of
birth or situation, upon a thousand irrelevant things; but in every case
there are elements present in the training itself that aid in determining
it. A young man begins to study medicine, and he finds that his physical
repulsion for work in the dissecting-room can not be overcome. He abandons
the study and by doing so eliminates an unfit person. A boy who has no
head for figures enters a business college. He can not get his diploma,
and the community is spared one bad bookkeeper. Certainly in some
instances, possibly in all, technical and professional schools that are
noted for the excellence of their product are superior not so much because
they have better methods of training, but because their material is of
better quality, owing to selection exercised either purposely, or
automatically, or perhaps by some chance. The same is true of colleges. Of
two institutions with the same curriculum and equally able instructors,
the one with the widest reputation will turn out the best graduates
because it attracts abler men from a wider field. This is true even in
such a department as athletics. To him that hath shall be given. This is
purely an automatic selective effect.
It would appear desirable to dwell more upon selective features in
educational training, to ascertain what they are in each case and how they
work, and to control and dispose them with more systematic care. Different
minds will always attach different degrees of importance to natural and
acquired fitness, but probably all will agree that training bestowed upon
the absolutely unfit is worse than useless, and that there are persons
whose natural aptitudes are so great that upon them a minimum of training
will produce a maximum effect. Such selective features as our present
educational processes possess, the examination, for instance, are mostly
exclusive; they aim to bar out the unfit rather than to attract the fit.
Here is a feature on which some attention may well be fixt.
How do these considerations affect the subject of general education? Are
we to affirm that arithmetic is only for the born mathematician and Latin
for the born linguist, and endeavor to ascertain who these may be? Not so;
for here we are training not experts but citizens. Discrimination here
must be not in the quality but in the quantity of training. We may divide
the members of any community into classes according as their formal
education--their school and college training--has lasted one, two, three,
four, or more years. There has been a selection here, but it has operated,
in general, even more imperfectly than in the case of special training.
Persons who are mentally qualified to continue their schooling to the end
of a college course, and who by so doing would become more useful members
of the community, are obliged to be content with two or three years in the
lower grades, while others, who are unfitted for the university, are kept
at it until they take, or fail to take, the bachelor's degree. An ideal
state of things, of course, would be to give each person the amount of
general education for which he is fitted and then stop. This would be
difficult of realization even if financial considerations did not so often
interfere. But at least we may keep in view the desirability of preventing
too many misfits and of insisting, so far as possible, on any selective
features that we may discover in present systems.
For instance, a powerful selective feature is the attractiveness of a
given course of study to those who are desired to pursue it. If we can
find a way, for example, to make our high school courses attractive to
those who are qualified to take them, while at the same time rendering
them very distasteful to those who are not so qualified, we shall
evidently have taken a step in the right direction. It is clear that both
parts of this prescription must be taken together or there is no true
selection. Much has been done of late years toward making educational
courses of all kinds interesting and attractive, but it is to be feared
that their attractiveness has been such as to appeal to the unfit as well
as to the fit. If we sugar-coat our pills indiscriminately and mix them
with candy, many will partake who need another kind of medicine
altogether. We must so arrange things that the fit will like while the
unfit dislike, and for this purpose the less sugar-coating the better.
This is no easy problem and it is intended merely to indicate it here, not
to propose a general solution.
The one thing to which attention should be directed is the role that may
be and is played by the printed book in selective education. There is more
or less effort to discredit books as educative tools and to lay emphasis
on oral instruction and manual training. We need not decry these, but, it
must be remembered that after all the book contains the record of man's
progress; we may tell how to do a thing, and show how to do it, but we
shall never do it in a better way or explain the why and wherefore, and
surely transmit that ability and that explanation to posterity, without
the aid of a stable record of some kind. If we are sure that our students
could and would pick out only what they needed, as a wild animal picks his
food in the woods, we might go far toward solving our problem, by simply
turning them loose in a collection of books. Some people have minds that
qualify them to profit by such "browsing," and some of these have
practically educated themselves in a library. Even in the more common
cases where formal training is absolutely necessary, access to other books
than text-books is an aid to selection both qualitative and quantitative.
Books may serve as samples. To take an extreme case, a boy who had no
knowledge whatever of the nature of law or medicine would certainly not be
competent to choose between them in selecting a profession, and a month
spent in a library where there were books on both subjects would certainly
operate to lessen his incompetence. Probably it would not be rash to
assert that with free access to books, under proper guidance, both before
and during a course of training, the persons who begin that course will
include more of the fit and those who finish it will include less of the
unfit, than without such access.
Let us consider one or two concrete examples. A college boy has the choice
of several different courses. He knows little of them, but thinks that one
will meet his needs. He elects it and finds too late that he is wasting
his time. Another boy, whose general reading has been sufficient to give
him some superficial knowledge of the subject-matter in all the courses,
sees clearly which will benefit him, and profits by that knowledge.
Again, a boy, full of the possibilities that would lead him to appreciate
the best in literature, has gained his knowledge of it from a teacher who
looks upon a literary masterpiece only as something to be dissected. The
student has been disgusted instead of inspired, and his whole life has
been deprived of one of the purest and most uplifting of all influences.
Had he been brought up in a library where he could make literary friends
and develop literary enthusiasms, his course with the dry as dust teacher
would have been only an unpleasant incident, instead of the wrecking of a
part of his intellectual life.
Still again, a boy on a farm has vague aspirations. He knows that he wants
a broader horizon, to get away from his cramped environment--that is about
all. How many boys, impelled by such feelings, have gone out into the
world with no clear idea of what they are fitted to do, or even what they
really desire! To how many others has the companionship of a few books
meant the opening of a peep-hole, thru which, dimly perhaps, but none the
less really, have been descried definite possibilities, needs, and
opportunities!
To all of these youths books have been selective aids merely--they have
added little or nothing to the actual training whose extent and character
they have served to point out. Such cases, which it would be easy to
multiply, illustrate the value of books in the selective functions of
training. To assert that they exercise such a function is only another way
of saying that a mind orients itself by the widest contact with other
minds. There are other ways of assuring this contact, and these should not
be neglected; but only thru books can it approach universality both in
space and in time. How else could we know exactly what Homer and St.
Augustine and Descartes thought and what Tolstoi and Lord Kelvin and
William James, we will say, are even now thinking?
It has scarcely been necessary to say all this to convince you of the
value of books as aids to education; but it is certainly interesting to
find that in an examination of the selective processes in education, we
meet with our old friends in such an important role.
A general collection of books, then, constitutes an important factor in
the selective part of an education. Where shall we place this collection?
I venture to say that altho every school must have a library to aid in the
formative part of its training, the library as a selective aid should be
large and central and should preferably be at the disposal of the student
not only during the period of his formal training, but before and after
it. This points to the public library, and to close cooperation between it
and the school, rather than to the expansion of the classroom library.
This is, perhaps, not the place to dispute the wisdom of our Board of
Education in developing classroom libraries, but it may be proper to put
in a plea for confining them to books that bear more particularly on the
subjects of instruction. The general collection of books should be outside
of the school, because the boy is destined to spend most of his life
outside of the school. His education by no means ends with his graduation.
The agents that operate to develop and change him will be at work so long
as he lives, and it is desirable that the book should be one of these. If
he says good-by to the book when he leaves school, that part of his
training is likely to be at an end. If he uses, in connection with, and
parallel to, his formal education a general collection of books outside of
the school, he will continue to use it after he leaves school. And even so
far as the special classroom library is concerned, it must be evident that
a large general collection of books that may be drawn upon freely is a
useful supplement. For the teacher's professional use, the larger the
collection at his disposal the better. A sum of money spent by the city in
improving and making adequate the pedagogical section of its public
library, particularly in the department of circulation, will be expended
to greater advantage than many times the amount devoted to a large number
of small collections on the same subjects in schools.
These are the considerations that have governed the New York Public
Library in its effort to be of assistance to the teachers and pupils in
the public schools of the city. Stated formally, these efforts manifest
themselves in the following directions:
(1) The making of library use continuous from the earliest possible age,
thru school life and afterwards;
(2) Cooperation with the teacher in guiding and limiting the child's
reading during the school period;
(3) Aid within the library in the preparation of school work;
(4) The supplementing of classroom libraries by the loan of books in
quantity;
(5) The cultivation of personal relations between library assistants and
teachers in their immediate neighborhood;
(6) The furnishing of accurate and up-to-date information to schools
regarding the library's resources and its willingness to place them at the
school's disposal;
(7) The increase of the library's circulation collection along lines
suggested and desired by teachers;
(8) The granting of special privileges to teachers and special students
who use the library for purposes of study.
Toward the realization of these aims three departments are now
cooperating, each of them in charge of an expert in his or her special
line of work.