New-York tribune., 1903-06-07
IN Il BIG LIBRARY.
Remarks on the Art of Reading
Books Through Their Backs.

ct have a way every two three days so, of
an afternoon. Of going down to library.
sliding into the little gate by the shelves. and
taking long empty walk there" says Gerard
Stanley Lee, in 1.-The Atlantic Monthly" II have
found that nothing quite takes the place Of It
for me-wandering up and down the aisles OF
my ignorance, letting myself be doomed at.
staring doggedly back I always feel when go
out the great door as if had won victory.
1 have at least faced the facts swing off to
my tramp on the hills where is the sense OF
space as If had faced the Bully OF the World.
the whole assembled world in his own den, and
he had given me a license to live.
"Of course it only lasts a little while. One
soon feels a library nowadays pulling on him
One has to go back and do it all over again. but
for the time being it affords infinite relief 1t
sets one in right relations to the universe, to
the Original Plan of Things. One suspects that
if God originally intended that men on this
planet should be crowded off by books 1t. it
would not have been put off to the twentieth
century.
THE last thing want to know in library is
exactly what I want there. 1 am tired OF know
ing what 1 want. 1 am always knowing what I
want I can know what want almost anywhere.
IF there is place left on Gods earth where
modern man go and go regularly and not
know what he wants awhile. In heavens name
why not let him hold to It.? I am as fond as
the next man. think. of knowing what am
about but when I find myself ushered into
great library I do not know what am about
any sooner than 1 help. I shall know soon
enough-God forgive me! When 1t IS given to
man to stand IN the Assembly Room Of Nations,
to feel the ages, all the ages gathering around
him. flowing past his life. to listen to the i'm
mortal stir of Thought. to the doings OF The
Dead, why should man interrupt-interrupt
a whole world-to know what he is about? 1
stand at the junction of all Time and Space.
am the three lenses. read the newspaper of
the universe
TT fades away after little. I know. go to
the card catalogue like lamb to the slaughter
poke my head into KnOwledge-somewhere-
am lost. but the light of it on the spirit does
not fade away. 1t leaves a glow there. 1t plays
on the pages afterward.
There is a certain fine excitement about TAX
ing library in this fashion. a sense OF spacious
ness of joy in it, which is almost always
sure to miss in librares-most libraries-by stay
ing in them. The only way one can get any
real good out of modern library seems to be
by going away in the nick of time II one
stays there is help for it. One is soon stand
ing before the card catalogue sorting ones wits
out in it, filing them away, and the sense of
boundlessness both in ones self and everybody
else-the thing library is for-is fenced Off for
ever.
'At least It seems fenced off forever One
sees the universe barred and patterned off with
a kind OF grating before 1t. IL is a card cata-
logue universe.
II can only speak for one but must say. for
myself. that compared with this feeling one
has in the door. this feeling of standing over a
library-mere reading in H., sitting down and
letting ones self be tucked into a single book
in it's humiliating experience.
"A card catalogue. OF course, device for
making a kind of tunnel for ones mind in a
library-for working ones way through it's
useful and necessary to all OF us Certainly IL a
man insists on having tnfnity In a convenient
forrn-infinity in box-it would be hard to find
anything better to have II in than a card cata-
logue.
But there are times when does not want
in1nity in box. He loses the best part OF IL
that way. He prefers IL in it's natural state
All that 1 contending for is. that when
these times come. the times when a man likes
to feel infinite knowledge crowding round him
feel It through the backs OF unopened books
and likes TO stand still and think about it-wor-
ship with the thought of tt-he ought to be al
lowed to do So 1t is true that there is no sign
up against 1t against thinking in libraries). But
there might as wen be 1t amounts to the