Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-05-03
LIFE IN LIBRARIES.
SOME OF THE QUEER FOLKS VIE
 READ PUBLIC BOOKS.

The Same Old Man Who Reads the Same
 old vO1umes-How the Astor Library
 Helps Young Artists-visitors at Cooper
 Institute.
 Libraries, especially the big public ones of this town, somehow seem to have about them something pathetic. Take the Astor, for in- stance-that magnificent stone and iron home of quarter of a million volumes It 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 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- CTS to be still seeing rainbow visions of prom ise 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 Immortals, the hospital or the morgue arc the rewards of those who labor here.
 SEEKING MECHANICAL LORE.
 
 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 jealously 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- ists in their experiments toward making gold. He is only type. His clothes a1N 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 a niche for him.
 For the artist the library is a 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 grifins that ornament your silver service may be copies
 
 yet suggested by something seen there. The beautiful in art is tenacious of life, and has lucky way of surviving the tooth of time that bids one hope. There is no buster table than this at which these workers bend.
 When spring comes laughing in, new order changes the routine of the 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 lghtness to set off the shade that hangs over all. The far aicove 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 ask2 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 Q modification of one that her grandmother found fair half a cen- tury 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 Astor, it is 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 Astor be- library the percentage of fiction Is said to be smaller than at any other library in the l world. It's 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 0 rush for the daily newspapers The town is never without it's contingent of unemployed, and these haunt the files, pouring over ad- l vertisements in the hope of finding clew to 1 job In the good old times when men feared God and honored the king, before the ! struggle for existence became hand to hand l fight, things were not so. You can tell one l of these unemployed by the aimless way he l walks the moment he enters the room, just 1 oS yOu Ca1A Uo4A o pOAAC0uudAS OTdWuu& SC0p among the thousands that sound outside your ] window.
 Of course there are the usual loungers among the {, 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 l the past four months one Anarchist looking man has been taking thorough course in chemistry. Another middle aged man sits every day by post near the end of the hall. l For nearly six months he 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 oozy 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, few blocks away, is saturated with intense and l I01,,o s,,f, II A~ls rA