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 77/1? Sifted Grain and titc Grain Sifters 225 odicals, and the modern cheap press and the Sunday newspaper were devised, — when books were rarities, and reading a somewhat rare accomphshment, — the Bible, Shakespeare, Paradise Lost, the Pitgrim's Progress, and Robinson Crusoe, the Spectator and TaHcr, Barrow's Sermons and Hume's History of England vi&Te the stand- ard household and family literature ; and the Bible was read and reread until its slightest allusions passed into familiar speech. In- deed the Bible, in King James's version, may be said to have been for the great mass of the community, — those who now have recourse to the Sunday paper, — the sum and substance of English literature. In this respect it is fairly open to question whether the course of evolution has tended altogether toward improvement. Now and again, however, we get one of these retrospective glimpses which is simply bewildering, and while indulging in it, one cannot help pon- dering over the mental conditions which once apparently prevailed. The question suggests itself, were there giants in those days ? — or did the reader ask for bread, and did they give him a stone ? We know, for instance, what the public library and circulating library of to-day are. We know, to a certain extent, what the reading de- mand is, and who the popular authors are. We know that, while history must content itself with a poor one in twenty, the call for works of fiction is more than a third of the whole, while nearly eighty per cent, of the ordinary circulation is made up of novels, story books for children, and periodicals. It is the lightest form of pabulum. This, in 1900. Now, let us get a glimpse of "the good old times." In the year 1790, a humorous rascal named Burroughs — once widely known as " the notorious Stephen Burroughs " — found him- self stranded in a town on Long Island, New York, a refugee from a Massachusetts gaol and whipping-post, the penalties incurred in or at both of which he had richly merited. In the place of his refuge, Burroughs served as the village schoolmaster ; and, being of an ob- servant turn of mind, he did not fail presently to note that the people of the place were "very illiterate," and almost entirely destitute of books of any kind, " except school books and bibles." Finding among the younger people of the community many " possessing bright abilities and a strong thirst for information," Burroughs as- serts that he bestirred himself to secure the funds necessary to found the nucleus of a public library. Having in a measure suc- ceeded, a meeting of " the proprietors " was called " for the purpose of selecting a catalogue of books ; " and presently the different mem- bers presented lists " peculiar to their own tastes." Prior to this meeting it had been alleged that the people generally anticipated