Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1888-01-05
A GOOD LIBRARY.
HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR THE
MAN WHO READS.

The First Law in Selecting Books
Library Should Grow with the Mind
Keep Your school Books-Light Litera
ture.
Thr first law in selecting books is an
sure, to buy along the line of your specia
work do not say in the line, for that il
precisely what is not wanted What we want
is not to be told what we can see or find out
for ourselves but what will enable us to see
more broadly than our separate experience
would lead us to see. Books, while not lead
ing us away from sure and special lines Of
life work, should keep US from narrowing
ourselves into grooves.
The second law is to buy books, in the main
as we need them. A library should grow
with the mind These two rules can be illus
trated together. We will suppose a mans
special line is anthropology. Plainly he
must also be good student of history. He
must also be well acquainted with recent
biological researches involve paleon-
tology and zoology, at least as far as results
of investigation go. He will not have gone
far before evolution, as scientific problem,
must be handled. Dealing fairly with this,
1
theories and comparative theology. l need
not carry the process farther, but say his
library should be Q) a working library along
this line, and Cg his books should be bought
as needed.
The possession of large number Of books
is not the possession of a library. Books,
however inherently valuable under certain
circumstances, under other circumstances be-
r. &c 10 nd for
of which only ten acres are W -rked, while
the owner lives in a bit of howell 1t is i'm
possible to express too strongly the close re-
lation that mind growth should bear to
library growth. Itshould be like the growth
of bone to a mans flesh.
No one should sell or give away his books
that have been used and seem no longer need
full. Especially should old school books and
college books be sacredly kept. To no other
books do we sustain so intimate personal re-
lationship. We shall surely miss the very
copy of Horace and of De Amicitia that we
grew familiar with, and some day will desire
to turn to passage in cars Poetica," or
"Via Sacra," and it will not be quite the
same as when we read it in sophomore year
on the log in the glen with Classmate Stevens.
l give every boy and girl warning not to part
with their text books in literature and
classics. Even my old Webster's spelling
book would now be treasure to me. Are
such books part Of Ebrarya Most truly,
yes. They are the very essential part Of a
library-the tools we have used as we came
along-but tools that never wear out.
Perhaps a careful distinction should be
made between the books in our study and
those in the library proper; for each man
should have his library, and each family
should have its library. The latter should be
built on less restricted plan; yet certainly
under careful rules. A home library should,
above all. have an atmosphere of refinement
and good society. 1t should not admit low
bred book any more than our drawing rooms
should admit the familiarity of low bred
people. An hour spent in it should produce
the refreshment that comes from social
hour with witty and good friends.
A really good home library must include
rescripts; it is sometimes pity-oftener not.
There are not 100 good authors in general lit
erature that cannot be wisely compressed.
1t will not pay to read them through. These
"Ha]f Hours" with the best authors are nec-
essary and valuable. But when it comes to
history am not so sure. And as for "Beal-
ties of Ruskin," Beauties of Goethe" ETC.,
ETC., let us burn them. If cannot 60 into
rose garden for myself, will thank you for
a bunch of flowers; but for you to run ahead
Of me with your nose and demand that I
shall smell over again your bouquet, am in
clined to select for myself.
A good library grows as our souls grow; it
widens out its sympathies and gets larger
outlook But at the same time sloughing
goes on. We only grow well as we can die
well. Some people have great difficulty in
dying to anything; they equally fail to grow;
that is, to enlarge. Such are your religious
bigots | hate to see q man who reads an
author by the dose-one dose a day; two
doses day-the way my grandmother took
her Bible, and as many take it yet, but in
smaller pellets have friend who carries
Shakespeare in his pocket, and bolts por-
tion each day. He resembles for all the world
a pump that is clogged up from having its
chain run TOO deep. Shakespeare has always
been too deep for the fellow, and he is only
pumping sand and gravel. Another took to
carving a mathematical treatise. He is him
self an equal angled triangle inscribed in
circle. We must be able to change intellec-
tually, outgrow and grow away from old
tastes. We all have our chrome period
some stop there.
The bulk of novels is Of no more value than
blank paper. Children who have little real
world as yet need great deal of the possible
and ideal. Novels, contrary to common
opinion, are peculiarly the books for the
young-true novels. Curiously, the worlds
earliest literature was mostly imaginative.
W.. have poems and tales 1000 years old,
while logic did not find utterance till about
$500 years ago. Voyages, travels, natural
history gradually come to serve in the place
of novels, the actual in the place of the pos
sible. Lowell urges the use of such old vol
umes of travel as were written by voyagers
"when the world was fresh and unhack-
neved u That last word of Lowell's tells the
story very fully. A well visited place in
England was one that hackney coaches ran
to and from-it was Hackneyed. Today the
whole world is Hackneyed--"E. ?. p" in
Globe Democrat