Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/124

 resent, and ostentation which they curtly call "swagger." Free Libraries are by no means essential to perfect happiness, while they may be called extremely detrimental to the prosperity of authors. A popular author would have good reason to rejoice if his works were excluded from Free Libraries, inasmuch as his sales would be twice, perhaps three times as large. If a Free Library takes a dozen copies of a book, that dozen copies has probably to serve for five or six hundred people, who get it in turn individually. But if the book could not possibly be obtained for gratuitous reading in this fashion, and could only be secured by purchase, then it follows that five or six hundred copies would be sold instead of twelve. This applies only to authors whose works the public clamour for, and insist on reading; with the more select "unpopular" geniuses the plan, of course, would not meet with approval. In any case, a Free Library is neither to an author, nor to the reading public, an unmitigated boon. One has to wait for months sometimes for the book specially wanted; sometimes one's name is 1,000 on the list, though certain volumes known as "heavy stock" can always be obtained immediately on application, but are seldom applied for. Real book-lovers buy their books and keep them. Reading which is merely haphazard and casual is purely pernicious, and does far more harm than good. However, Carnegie, being the possessor of millions, probably does not know what else to do with the cash except in the way of Libraries. To burden a human biped with tons of gold, and then set him adrift to get rid of it as best he may, is one of the scurviest tricks of Fortune.