The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-07-05
FINE MEMORIAL
 ID MIR. JOHN HAY Plans for Library Have Been
 Announced AT BROWN UNIVERSITY Gift of About e5 Friends of Dstn- gulshed Statesman, Mir. Carnegie Among Them-BuiIding
 Is Unique.

my mind John Hay IS the llleSt lioWSi oA our civilization" the late President Me- Kinley once said. Thousands of Ameri- cans who came into personal contact with the distinguished literary man and states man whose death was regretted short time ago shared that feeling. To hum dreds of thousands of other Americans who have forgotten neither Mir Hays achievements in the public service nor his literary masterpieces-for what school boy has not acclaimed Jim Bludsoe" or Lit tie Brooches ?''-it is necessarily of inter- est that an enduring memorial Is about to be erected through the gifts of some g gentlemen, friends of MT. Hay and Of his alma mater. These friends had al- ready subscribed $150.000 when MT. An drew Carnegie subscribed S150,0O0 more, and the memorial will soon be erected.
 Very appropriately this memorial will take the form of a university library, the plans for which have just been accepted by the corporation of Brown university. Honor will thus be done not only to an individual but to the general conception of the responsibility of the educated man in a democracy. MT. Hay throughout his long and useful career was always scholar, in the productive. not In the pe- dantic sense. Literature he followed pro-
  could. His interest in public affairs and his sense of the duties of citizenship were such as to prevent his devoting all his energies to authorship Just as when ne was chief editorial writer of the New York Tribune he refused to familiarize himself with the business details of newspaper publication because he wanted to keep his attention fixed on the current events which ne interpreted brilliantly cer- tainly as any writer in the days when journalism was more personal than now, so he also later on declined to become acquainted with any of the ways of the hack writer constantly studying the mar ket for opportunities of placing his liter ary wares. What he wrote was written from conviction, and from knowledge that he had something worth saying. Conse- quently from tho class poem at his grad uation from Brown university in 1858 through the brilliant "Castilian Days. the first essays of which MT. Howells hailed as an important discovery for the Atlantic Monthly, and on through the celebrated Pike County Ballads" the life of Lincoln and the occasional pa pers of the last few years. nothing un- worthy or perfunctory came from his pen. More than any other man in public life in the United States. with the possible exception of MT. Roosevelt, of whose power of keeping in touch with many things MT Hay sometimes expressed envy, he was an enthusiastic student of the best that has been thought and said, delighting in reading in the quiet of his oastle-like home at Washington. able in conversation to quote from surprising range of literature.
 Honoring such an alumnus Brown uni versity will witness the erection, as a very important addition to its apparatus of scholarship, of great modern repos- tory of books. How glad MT. Hay him. self would have been to see his name thus perpetuated may at least be coniee- tured. His attachment to his alma mater was unwayering. It was shown by the charming ode in which ne commemorated her centennial in 1864 in the midst of his duties as secretary to President Lincoln, and even more directly years after in a letter which he wrote to the librarian of the university to accompany a CODY of his life of Lincoln, which he asks to be ac- cepted 'as a token of the reverence and gratitude with which I regard that an- cient seat of learning This letter framed, is now one of the treasures in the office of the Brown librarian. Mir H. l.. Koopman.
 How great the value will be to tha university of the gift of a memorial to this noble American is easily appreciated if the details of its construction are studied According to the plans prepared by the architects, Messrs. Shepley Rutan and Coolidge of Boston, who were also the architects of the John Carter Brown library. already on the university ground at Providence and of the Harper Memo rial library of the University of Chicago the JoNr Hay library will be erected at cost of a quarter of million dollars. The building will have a frontage of a little more than 12o feet. facing the uni versity grounds. and will extend 103 feet down College street. The style of archi- lecture is the English renaissance of the period of Sir Christopher Wren. The material will be Indiana limestone The building will have basement ground first, mezzanine. and second floors. the main entrance being Prospect street, with only few steps of ascent.
 The interior of the John Hay library has been planned or the basis of sug- gestons made by the librarian after months of study. including a tour of in- spcction made in company with an ar chitectural expert to the principal libraries of the east. The problem was to pro- vide accommodations for 200 readers. S00000 volumes rooms for various special libraries and for study, and for the dif- ferent branches of the library adminis- tration.
 The requirements have been fulfilled in accordance with the modern idea in planning libraries and museums of inyit- ing the public to make use of the treas- ures of literature and art. There was n time when librarian of Harvard col lege announced with satisfaction on n Saturday afternoon that every book but one was back the shelves and that he was sending a messenger for that one. The newer point of view is to make the literary collections as accessible as pos slble. It will be noticed that in the John Hay library the rooms visited by most users of the library are on the first floor. Practically all the rooms open to the public, in fact, except the large exhibi- tion room, are on this floor The admin istraton of the building is centered on the vertical series of rooms of which the cataloguers room is midway and these rooms are connected with one an- other and with the stack by lift and by stairs The stack will contain some 25o.- GOO volumes. and 5000 volumes will be contained in other parts of the library. It is expected that pneumatic cleaning will be installed throughout the building. The department libraries will be accom- modated in the old building which will communicate with the new and thus make available to readers in either building the resources of the other.
 The reading room has seats for IFS