The Meaning and Importance of Libraries - Part IV (August 1907)

The final speaker at the dedicatory exercises in 1907 was Prof. Henry L. Chapman of Bowdoin College. His full remarks weren't printed in the article, but he is quoted as saying, "On this day when you have met for the purpose of dedicating this library, the grateful recipients and the generous giver are equally to be congratulated. A library is wholly benevolent; free and impartial in its ministrations; the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the sad and the light-hearted, the strong and the infirm, adherents of all political and religious faiths, may all enjoy its privileges.

When we enter the library we may well feel a touch of humility and reverence, as when we go into a company of select people. They wait with modest and quiet dignity to hold converse with us. A library is very democratic, and though in life they may have been unapproachable, hedged about my conventions, the authors now stand side by side on the shelves. Plato by Mr. Dooley, John Milton and John Bunyan together and Shakespeare is not supercilious to Mother Goose. They dwell together without question of precedence. Here is gathered a company of the wisest and wittiest of men you could pick out in a thousand years, and the thoughts which they did not uncover to their bosom friends are written out to us, the strangers of another age.

There is no more notable characteristic of community life than the multiplication of libraries.

If we go back to the boyhood of Benjamin Franklin we may compare the poverty of the eighteenth century with the wealth of the twentieth. Such a thing as a circulating library was unknown in the country. Today the most interesting map of Massachusetts is that that exhibits the boundary lines of the cities and with the boundaries pictures of the public libraries, and there is not a city or town in Massachusetts that does not possess a library.

It is not personal caprice, but a deep seated conviction, that has led men to give so generously of their fortunes to build libraries, leaving the maintenance to those who will reap the benefit of them...It is the office of the library to mark as far as possible the line between good literature and that that is not good. It can hardly be doubted, however, that any book, so far as it leads the mind out of its ordinary thought, is of real service to the reader, even if it be not of the highest order. It cannot be doubted that some novels are of real merit, but instead of snatching at the newest novels we should be content to read those which have outlived the clamor of the advertisers. Scott, Hawthorne, Dickens, Jane Austen, Thackeray, George Eliot - no one can ever be ashamed of being found in their company. The will serve as touchstones to test the quality of the lesser ones. He who knows Shakespeare, Motley, Milton - will not be easily be beguiled into accepting that which is not good. In the choice of books to read we may follow that simple rule of selecting the books we like the best. If we are not interested we shall not open our minds, and if we do not open our minds then we shall take in no new ideas. The thing to aim at is to cultivate a taste for the best, and it certainly can be cultivated by those who desire it.

The library which we dedicate today will surely be an object of pride to the community, as well as a minister of good. The books will be friends to you, to enrich and make your lives serene and happy."

The Kennebunk Free Library is as impressive today as it was back then. It is a valuable asset to the entire community. I am very proud to not only claim it as my home town library, but also as the place where I got my start as a librarian. Thank you, Mr. Parsons, for your generous gift and to all those who have come after you to support the library, keeping it strong and vibrant.

The Meaning and Importance of Libraries - Part III (August 1907)

Mr. Henry E. Andrews accepted the keys on behalf of the library trustees and addressed those gathered for the celebration as follows: On behalf of the trustees of the Kennebunk Free Library Association of Kennebunk, I receive these keys - the token of the possession of the building which Mr. George Parsons has generously caused to be erected and now freely gives into their keeping for the use and advantage of this community.

It is a munificent gift, and a gift opportune, enduring, humane. He provides, in the very heart of the township, a new and an adequate habitation for a high enterprise. He advances a project which, in earlier years, public-spirited men, whose memory we honor, conceived and inaugurated for the public welfare. Their hope has been justified, their expectation exceeded. By the timely bestowal of this building, he prospers their project a hundred fold. A structure so substantial not only promotes, it perpetuates, the institution on which, with the church, as on a foundation four-square and firm, rests our common human good. Farther into the future than we can look, this structure will safeguard the treasures of books which we have accumulated and will engage after generations to add to them. Its influence will be as pervasive as it is permanent, as catholic as it is constant. Carlyle only uttered the conviction of mankind at large when he said, 'The founding of a library is one of the quietest things we can do with regard to results. It is one of the greatest things, but there is nothing I know of at bottom more important.' With regard to results, it is no less important to further than to found a library; and sir, the building which Mr. Parsons gives us today, enlarges and enhances the operation of that subtle force issuing from wise books to inspire the individual, and to mould the community. If its adequacy, its order, its perfected equipment, in its dignity and beauty, it offers to every citizen of the town a wider opportunity, a more gracious and suasive invitation, a higher incentive, to seek self-development and civic betterment, than the past has offered. Its very presence is a symbol. It appeals to a higher mood than the mood of every day. It stands apart from our factories and shops in a contrast that suggests the contrast between the literature of all times and the periodical of the hour. It witnesses the deep satisfaction of art. It speaks, even to the hurried passer-by, some words of an unusual languages, such as, in the fine phrase of Thoreau, 'are raised above the trivialness of the street to be perpetual suggestions and provocations.' Thus in itself it is educative, and prepares the mind for the pursuit of culture. In and of itself it points the quiet , withdrawn ways to wisdom and understanding. By the visible example of its own excellence it incites us to walk in those ways.

To establish here in our midst an influence that tends unchangingly to enrich the individual life, unceasingly to refine public taste, unwaveringly to lift up our intellectual ideals, and to guide our communal progress towards that 'wider and wiser humanity' which shone in the vision of Lowell as the goal of Democracy, that is an act in the highest, the truest, sense humane; and for his disinterested act, for his gift, for his abiding benefaction, I beg, sir, that you will carry to Mr. Parsons the heartfelt and lasting gratitude of all his fellow-citizens in this town." (York County Coast Star, August 2, 1907)

Words from a hundred years ago with a very modern context. Although today it's about more than just the books, the public library brings to each and every community a connection to the entire world.