Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1906 — LIBRARY NEWS. [ARTICLE]

LIBRARY NEWS.

The ladies of the Presbyterian Missionary Society recently gave to tjje library a very interesting and helpful collection of missionary books. They are as follows: A Mexican Ranch, by J. P. Duggan. Story of John G. Patou, by Rev. James Pa ton, David Liviugton, by W. G. Biaikie. Chinese Slave Girl, by Rev. J. A. Davis. James Gilmore of Mongolia, by Richard Lovett. Persian Life and Customs, by Rev. S. G. Wilson. Story of the Life of Mackay of Uganda, by Mackay. Growth of the Kingdom of God, by Sidney L. Gulick. Nemorama the Nautchnee, by Rev. Edwin Mao Minn. Way of Faith Illustrated, by Hii YnugMl. Oowikapuu, by E. R. Young. • In the Tiger Jungle, by Rev. Jacob Chamberlain. Light in the East, by Bishop J. M.Thoburn. A few points of discussion at a recent Wisconsin library meeting may be of interest to some: “One speaker believed that the average public failed to realize that in the public reading room there is a public convenience and a secret reformatory institution all in one, competing with the saloon, the dive, the dance hall, the gaming table, and every other resort of sin aud solace in the modern catalogue of evil and frivolous tendencies. To enter upou this competition successfully, the speaker contended, there must be something more than mere books, magazines, lights, chairs, radiators and tables. There must be an atmosphere of welcome a homelike feeling that breathes freedom and fellowship for the men and boys without homes, or who having homes, yet lack a place for quiet peaceful and uninterrupted reading or study. While the atmosphere within the reading room should be refining and elevating, the speaker feared that there was great danger through rigidity of rules and a general air of stiffness and conventionality that those who are most in need of such opportunities are repelled and the room unconsciously reserved for those who need it least and use it little. The speaker would have one room in which the cigar was tolerated and which the working man might enter in the .garments of his toil.”

For a while our library room was filled by the boys and girls of the schools and by some of the older people. Since the opening of some amusements in the city, the young people as well as the older ones have deserted the library for the more questionable places. Of an evening the reading room is almost empty. I should like to appeal to the parents, asking for tneir co-operation and interest. Come visit the library and see for yourself that it is a good place to be and then insist that your children, the boys especially, spend their hours at the library instead of elsewhere. The library tries to furnish interesting material for all, and will do all it can to make the library the central attraction of the city. I trust the older people will give this a little thought.

Of all the cakes that Granny bakes give me the grundens bread Eight men and two little-boys. If I had the wings of a dove bow swiftly I would fly, to Roberts’ Implement House and a buggy I would buy, all high class goods at Roberts.