New-York tribune., 1918-04-28

ernmonC at w aSQlnELOU, aIO OU-
tainable for the price Of Is cents from
the Superintendent of Documents at
the Government Printing Office 1t
bears forbidding title, as follows:
Library Of Congress
CLASSIFICATION
Music
and
Books on Music
M: Music.
NIL: Literature of Music.
MT: Musical instruction and Study.
The story it tells is about as con-
secutive as Webster's Dictionary, and
its brief preface is so technical that it
cannot possibly be Of interest to any
save professional Librarians.
Yet between the lines Of this publi-
cation there is romance, a romance
refreshing and delightful to all lovers
Of music. It is the story of the music
department of the Library of Congress
at Washington, as shepherded and
nurtured by Oscar G. Sonneck, who
held the post of librarian of the de-
partment for fifteen years until few
months ago.
The administrative department of
the government moves in its myster-
ious ways amid a profound silence.
Except in time of war, it employs no
press agents. 1t distributes it's seeds
and all its multitudinous booklets on
this and that without asking for half
page Sunday "space" in the newspapers
in recognition of its services to some
thing or other. Accordingly, when it
creates what is, all in all, much the
best music library in the country. it
says nothing about the fact, and leaves
it for the lovers of music to discover,
with pleased surprise, that there in
Washington is most efficiently ad-
ministered department which is more
than anxious to serve their needs.
4, To be a capable government admin
istrative official is to be anonymous
enough (save, Of course, in war time).
But to be librarian is to be more in
distinguishable than the famous black
cat IN dark room when it isn't there.
Yet there turks in the life of every
librarian romance. To our mind it is
the most romantic story which the arts
of peace have to tell.
The librarian reverently collects
scraps of information, foolish old PAM
phlets, stray handbills, all the riffraff
OF bygone age, to file and store and
catalogue. You and I would throw
such stuff into the waste basket. What
IS the use of keeping it? Will any
body ever call for the 1715 edition of
an English broadside, differing only in
the spelling of two words from the edi-
tion of 1713? In all human probabil-
ity, no. Yet somebody might And that
faint possibility is enough to put the
Librarian to half an hour of faithful
inspection and cataloguing. So hun
dreds of thousands of cards are piled
up in the files, and for years none Of
them are ever touched, and some of the
items, centuries hence, will have lain
uncalled for since the day they left the
librarians hand
Not all the items in a library are
equally valuable. But all, to the H.
brarian, are equally deserving of con-
scientious and reverent treatment. He
hopes that you and 1 will some day
come and ask for his tawdry treasures.
He has placid faith that some dav
each item of his labors will prove not
to have been in vain. His trust is as
touching as that of the mother who
keeps candle nightly in her window
to welcome her wandering boy should
he ever come home.
You and I rarely think of this as
pect of the librarians work. We con-
tent ourselves with storming when
the book we called for doesn't arrive
within ten minutes, and with critics.
ing the catalogue system until we
learn that we made out our slip in
correctly. We forget that the librari
ans work is the purest labor of love
the world can show; it is one of the
most valuable which society knows. but
perhaps the furthest removed from
tangible results.
Now the music department. Of the
Library of Congress, besides being all
these things. besides being much the
largest and best classified in the coun-