Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/69

 body, save a few American and Hebrew millionaires. Unless an adequate grant is made for the purchase of new, and the renewal of worn-out books, no school library can possibly be equipped with good books, or maintained in a fair condition of efficiency. Most of the school libraries are divisible into two categories—the Used and the Unused. The former are freely accessible to all the scholars, and the books are generally worn to rags, because there is no fund from which to replace them. The latter are kept in locked presses, under the care of a schoolmaster, and the books are only occasionally doled out to the boys who give least trouble, as a reward for the successful repression of their natural animal spirits. The contents of both kinds of library are not distinguished by much taste or catholicity in selection, and many of the books are faded 'chestnuts' which no self-respecting scholar will waste time over if he or she can get anything with more life in it. The school libraries in question generally contain some volumes of Peter Parley's Annual; a few ragged Ballantynes, Kingstons, and Vernes; the Quiver; a ragged assortment of Chatterbox; a missionary record or two; Pinnock's Catechisms; Corner's History of England; and similar accurate and stimulating works, many of which are undoubtedly the gifts of pious donors who wished to make room in their own collections for something fresh. On a rather higher plane, but still suffering somewhat from the withering influences of red-