To what highest and most profitable use can I put my reading? is the question then which each one should ask himself, and according as the answer is, so should the choice be made. It may be that one will read that he may understand better his duties and privileges as a citizen; another, that he may be a just master, or an intelligent and faithful workman; still another, that she may be a wise parent; while a fourth may have the strong conviction that everything else should be laid aside for the study of one of the masterpieces of the world's literature, that he may develop his higher faculties and become a man thinking lofty thoughts and capable of noble deeds.
But there is a very large class of readers, especially of a public library, to whom what I have just said will be of but little use. And as it is upon them that the choice of books has the greatest influence for good or evil, it is to speak of their interests that I turn with the deepest solicitude. This class may be subdivided into two classes--the children of intelligent parents who are capable of directing their reading, and those children who have none to guide them in their choice. As regards the former, one of the greatest dangers of the public library, in my opinion, is that many parents throw off all responsibility as to the books their children read upon those who have charge of the library. A generation ago, all the books, as a rule, which the young read were bought especially for them by their parents or friends, with more or less care in the selection. Of course under these circumstances they had a general knowledge of what their children read. Now a great many parents neither know, nor do they apparently seem to care to know, what books fall into their children's hands, so long as they are from the public library, which is supposed to be a guarantee for their fitness for young readers. Without entering here upon the important question as to what books should or should not be put in a public library, it is enough to say that no intelligent parent, with a right idea of his duty toward his children, can properly lay this responsibility upon persons, however carefully chosen or however faithful in the discharge of their duties. The capacity of children for receiving good or bad impressions from books differs, as their features and forms vary. The same story might prove harmless to one boy and give a moral twist to another's mind from which he might never recover. One girl might receive from a book a hundred evil suggestions, hopelessly depraving her imagination, while upon another it might not leave a single evil trace. Now, it is not possible for the most scrupulous librarian to discriminate between these two, and refuse the book to the one and freely give it to the other. And therefore no library with a large and miscellaneous collection of stories and novels can be safe for children freely to use except under the careful supervision of their parents. The only safeguard of which I know is for parents to read much with their children, to interest themselves in their books, and to talk with them about them. Those stories, for instance, against which there has been such an outcry of late years, would have but small power to hurt that boy to whom a father had taken the pains to point out the absurdities, the unrealities, the false ideas and aims of which they are accused.