Library Ideals

Portada
Open Court Publishing Company, 1918 - 78 páginas
WISCONSIN, a true cradle of freedom and successful government, has fostered several librarians who were true humanists. Dr. Peckham was one. Dr. Thwaites was another. Henry E. Legler was unlike either of these, but greater than either in his continued and unabated activity for the good of the people. Once, on being complimented for his splendid work in natural history and his persistence in the pursuit of scientific facts, Dr. Peckham remarked: "Oh, yes, but the facts have no value in themselves. They merely build up the groundwork of the ideas, and help you climb to the point of view where the deeper aspects of the subject spread out before you like a landscape beneath a mountain-top." Mr. Legler's activity in behalf of libraries will support the same explanation. He seemed always immersed in detail, always planning some movement and carrying it into effect by his peculiar, dynamic persistence. But he who observed the man kindly and closely cannot have failed to have noticed that there was a distinct Beyond illumining and overshadowing it all. There was a dream to come true, a vision to be unfolded. The dream and vision were in the man's speech and eye. He lived under a prophecy.

Dentro del libro

Páginas seleccionadas

Otras ediciones - Ver todas

Términos y frases comunes

Pasajes populares

Página 33 - For these things tend still upward, progress is The law of life, man is not Man as yet. Nor shall I deem his object served, his end Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth, While only here and there a star dispels The darkness, here and there a towering mind O'erlooks its prostrate fellows : when the host Is out at once to the despair of night, When all mankind alike is perfected, Equal in full-blown powers — then, not till then, I say, begins man's general infancy.
Página 38 - I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!
Página 7 - over the most part of the world. Three such pairs as I now carry on my feet have I worn out upon this pilgrimage, and now the fourth is growing slender underneath my steps. And all this while I have not found the city.
Página 50 - I gave a beggar from my little store Of well-earned gold. He spent the shining ore And came again and yet again, still cold And hungry as before. I gave a thought, and through that thought of mine He found himself, the man, supreme, divine! Fed, clothed, and crowned with blessings manifold, And now he begs no more.
Página 38 - I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both.
Página 19 - ... their circumstances ever permit them to visit. If anything is to stay the narrowing and hardening process which specialization of learning, specialization of inquiry and of industry and swift accumulation of wealth are setting up among us, it is a return to romance, poetry, imagination, fancy, and the general culture we are now taught to despise. Of all these the novel is a part; rather, in the novel are all of these. But a race may surely find springing up in itself a fresh love of romance,...
Página 18 - ... so that for anything he knew his brains lay in small bags at his temples, and he had no more thought of representing to himself how his blood circulated than how paper served instead of gold. But the moment of vocation had come, and before he got down from his chair, the world was made new to him by a presentiment of endless processes filling the vast spaces planked out [ 206 ] of his sight by that wordy ignorance which he had supposed to be knowledge. From that hour Lydgate felt the growth of...
Página 6 - Will went to and fro, minding his wayside inn, until the snow began to thicken on his head. His heart was young and vigorous ; and if his pulses kept a sober time, they still beat strong and steady in his wrists He carried a ruddy stain on either cheek, like a ripe apple; he stooped a little, but his step was still firm; and his sinewy hands were reached out to all men with a friendly pressure.
Página 51 - T is no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then Pulsing it again through them...
Página 5 - ... by the river. It did not matter what it was; everything that went that way, were it cloud or carriage, bird or brown water in the stream, he felt his heart flow out after it in an ecstasy of longing.

Información bibliográfica