But how about the man whose first selection for this intimate personal group would be a complete set of the works of George Ade?  Well, if that is his taste, let his library reflect it.  Let a man be himself.  That there is virtue in merely surrounding oneself with the great masters of literature all unread and unloved, I can not see.  Better acknowledge your poor taste than be a hypocrite.

The librarian can not force the classics down the unwilling throats of those who do not care for them and are perhaps unfitted to appreciate them.  There has been entirely too much of this already and it has resulted disastrously.  Surely, a sane via media is possible, and we may agree that a man will never like Eschylus, without assuring him that Eschylus is an out-of-date old fogy, while on the other hand we may acknowledge the greatness of Homer and Milton without trying to force them upon unwilling and incompetent readers.  After all it is not so much a question of Milton versus George Ade, as it is of sanity and wholesomeness against vulgarity and morbidity.  And if I were to walk through one city and behold collections of this latter sort predominating and then through another, where my eyes were gladdened with evidences of good taste, of love for humor that is wholesome, sentiment that is sane, verse that is tuneful and noble, I should at once call on the public librarian and I should say to him, “Thou art the man!” The literary taste of your community is a reflection of your own as shown forth in your own institution—­its collection of books, the assistants with which you have surrounded yourself, your attitude and theirs through you toward literature and toward the public.

But, someone asks, suppose that I am so fortunate and so happy as to sit in the midst of such a group of friendly authors; how and how often shall I re-read?  Shall I traverse the group every year?  He who speaks thus is playing a part; he is not the real thing.  Does the young lover ask how and how often he shall go to see his sweetheart?  Try to see whether you can keep him away!  The book-lover reopens his favorite volume whenever he feels like it.  Among the works on his shelves are books for every mood, every shade of varying temper and humor.  He chooses for the moment the friend that best corresponds to it, or it may be, the one that may best woo him away from it.  It may be that he will select none of them, but occupy himself with a pile of newcomers, some of whom may be candidates for admission to the inner group.  The whole thing—­the composition of his library, his attitude toward it, the books that he re-reads oftenest, the favorite passages that he loves, that he scans fondly with his eye while yet he can repeat them by heart, his standards of admission to his inner circle—­all is peculiarly and personally his own.  There is no other precisely like it, just as there is no other human being precisely like its owner.  There is as much difference between this kind of a library and some that we have seen as there is between a live, breathing creature with a mind and emotions and aspirations, and a wax figure in the Eden Musee.