Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/89

 The Library. 77 Now it seems to me that when you come to read your readers, these large fiction issues are very much made up of this book, that was taken out because it had such a comical title that one could not make out what it could be about ; and this, because the heroine's name was the same as the reader's ; and this, because they are sure someone said something about it, but whether it was in praise or blame they did not remember. All these issues were for one day only. They would have been for a shorter time did the rules of the library permit it. Now why should not a reader of fiction go into the matter with as clear a head and eyes as open as one who reads science or history ? If I have mentioned many weaknesses, and perhaps some crookednesses of readers, it is not that our attitude to them should in any way savour of loftiness or contempt. We do not despise the minds any more than the books we cannot read. We do not want all readers to be so docile as the boy who went to a friend of mine for Jack Sheppard, and on being told, rather severely, that it was not in the library, said, " Then I'll take the Sunday at Home.'" It never seems to vex a reader if you put before him a list or a lot of books he has read and liked. It shows him you have got his keynote, and that there is a probability of harmony between you ; but introduce only two or three uncongenial or dis- cordant books, and the sympathetic feeling suffers. And it nearly always happens that directly after the wrong reader has taken a book not quite suited to him or her (I everywhere imply both sexes), the right one comes in directly after, whom that would have been the very book for. I am not now claiming priestly functions for the librarian that must be a subject of the future but there is something matrimonial about suiting a reader with a book, and woe betide the maker of bad matches ! JOSEPH GILBURT.