Wichita eagle., 1888-05-13
LIFE IN LIBRARIES.
SOME OF THE QUEER FOLKS WHO
READ PUBLIC BOOKS

| The Same Old Man Who Reads the Same
Old volumes-How the Aston Library
Helps Young Artists-visitors at Cooper
Institute.
Libraries, especially the big public ones of
! this town, somehow seem 70 have about them
something pathetic Take the Aston, for in
stance-that magnificent stone and iron home
! of a quarter OF a million volumes. 1t isn't
the unidentified books softly growing gray
under the gathering dust of years that ap-
peal to one SO much as the living delivers
who dig through this accommodating forget
fulness in search of an idea There they sit,
day after day. generation after generation,
patiently, silently, hungrily hunting a fact
The marble stairways have been worn into
little hollows by their feet. Some of these
footsteps have long ago lost their way in the
enchanted region of Bohemia, and some of
them, youthful and springy, show their own
ers to be stin seeing rainbow visions of prom
Use behind the soft swinging doors Minister
| and mechanic, artist and artisan, physician
and fiction writer jostle elbows one against
the other, and for each one the shelves have
different story to tell The Academy of the
Immortals, the hospital or the morgue are
l40 VI IuOSc III i1OOl uclc.
SEEKING MECHANICAL LORE.
Over against the alcove where patent re-
ports are kept sits an old man. The table in
front of him is strewn with drawings on card
board and tracings on oiled paper Nine vol
umes, all forbidding looking, are piled up
about him, and the tenth he has spread open
before him. For four years he has sat the
same way. AS sure as comes the postman
and the sun, so surely comes this strange old
man, searching, probing, questioning the
Sphynx pages that say SO little or so much,
pleading with the black volumes to give up
their secret. He speaks to no one, and is
jealousy careful that no alien eye shall rest
upon his drawings. If he were searching for
the secret of perpetual motion he could not
be more guarded in every action Now and
then the favorite works on mechanics are re-
placed by some rare and all forgotten screed
teaching discoveries made by the old alchem-
lists in their experiments toward making
gold. He is only a type. His clothes are
poor. He spends barely ten minutes at lunch
during the day. Sometimes he does not go
out at all And, after all, the academy may
not hold niche for him.
For the artist the library is mine, and
the figured wall paper in your hallway has
probably come from some old scroll that
japanese works here show. Just in the same
way the delicately hammered griffins that
ornament your silver service may be copies
from some forgotten volume, or if not copies
yet suggested by something seen there Tho
beautiful in art is tenacious of life, and has a
lucky way of surviving the tooth of time that
bids one hope There is no buster table than
fbic or which tboca ham
When spring comes laughing in, new
order changes the routine of tho library.
The very dust upon the books seems to feel
the quickening breath. Volumes that have
not been touched for months are taken down.
The number Of feminine visitors increases.
There is color and perfume and ightness to
set off the shade that hangs over ALL The
far alcoye to the south sees pretty heads
bending above colored plates in old books
whose type makes it difficult to tell an S from
an F. And what are they looking for in
these old volumes, you ask? For fashions.
With the coming of blue skies there is an in
stinctive turning to new designs in dress.
And where can one get better ideas than
from those old plates that tell of ''tea cup
times of hoop and hood, when our grand
mothers dreamt of moonlight and blue eyes.
So the pretty Easter bonnet that your Phillis
wears today is only modification of one
that her grandmother found fair half CEN
fury ago. So, too, when fancy dress balls
are in vogue, the old library always sees an
influx of feminine readers hanging over old
fashion plates, studying up new ways to be
beautiful, for the beautiful is as old as wo-
man herself.
COOPER INSTITUTES VISITORS
Just around the corner the library of Cooper
institute has very different visitors. Like
the Aston, it is a reference library and no
books are allowed to be taken away. New
York has no great public circulating libra
ries like those OF Boston and Chicago The
free circulating library Of this town and
several smaller ones allow books to be taken
out, but they are supported by private sub
scription and the city has no voice in their
management.
There is no novel reading at the Aston be-
cause no novels are kept, and at the Cooper
library the percentage of fiction is said to be
smaller than at any other library In the
world. Its reading room is the home of
wOrkingmen, and they read to improve their
minds or for some specific purpose, not for
fun. Early in the morning there is always
never without its contingent of unemployed,
and these haunt the files, pouring over ad-
vertisements in the hope of finding clew to
a job In the good old times when men
feared God and honored the king, before the
struggle for existence became a hand to hand
fight, things were not SO. You can tell one
of these unemployed by the aimless way he
walks the moment he enters the room, lust
III ~, IL, 4
among the thousands that sound outside your
window.
OF course there are the usual loungers
among the Z, 900 people that come every day
into the reading room During the winter
they come into the room TO get warm, take a
book in hand, forget themselves and are soon
asleep. These are soon gotten rid of. For
the past four months one Anarchist looking
man has been taxing thorough course in
chemistry Another middle aged man sits
every day by post near the end OF the hall.
For nearly six months be has not missed a
day He comes in early in the morning,
reads until noon, goes out to lunch, and re-
turns and spends the afternoon In the same
chair. The ladies have an alcove set apart
for their OWN use Many who do not have a
fire at home drop in to read an afternoon
away in a coy nook. In the same way, a
number of elderly men who have small in
comes come day after day to their favorite
corners and dream over tales Of adventure
The New York Historical library, a few
blocks away, is saturated with intense and
almost painful respectability. II, too, rs
reference library, devoted almost wholly 70
American history, 70 geneaiogy and to
heraldry. In this, our new couatry. the
study OF eeuealogy is not what the library
hopes 10 see 1t, and every assistance is given
to the author who complies a volume on the