By Irving Browne.
CURRENT TOPICS. The Law L1brar1an. — It would seem an appro priate retribution on one who has always believed that it would be the better for the Law if all the law re ports of the last half century should be burned up and never reproduced, that he should be appointed a pub lic law-librarian. Especially so, when that one has always cherished, if not a lively animosity, at least an ill-concealed impatience toward the genus libra rian, founded on the observation that most of them seem to deem it their office to prevent the public from seeing the books. Yet this is exactly what has hap pened to the present writer. He is placed in charge of a law-library of some ten thousand volumes, and is informed that his first and chief duty is to increase its numbers very largely! (Publishers will please not all rush at once.) This to a person who believes that all the law ought to be found in four or five mod erate-sized volumes! (Mr. Carter says it can all be found in four or five hundred.) It is not an Easy Chair, this librarian's chair. For once, the occupant begins to have a sympathy with Tite Barnacle, and to be disposed to say to the crowd of inquirers for things that he cannot tell them, " I say, you mustn't come here saying you want to know, you know." It is so very humiliating to be detected in knowing so little! It is pitiful, also, to look at these highly re spectable old authorities, so much esteemed for so many years, and to reflect that they are " back num bers." The law-school graduate of last year never heard of Bacon's or Viner's Abridgement, and "wants to know" what " B. & P." or " Sch. & Lef." means. He demands a book about electricity, "trusts," or sales on margins. Sometimes an old gentleman from the country, who has made a motion to get ten dollars costs, inquires for " I Code Rep. N. S.," not being aware that even that has lost its au thority, because not even codes are permanent. But there are compensations in every employment. The law librarian may console himself with the reflection that his books do not tend to debase or demoralize the community. It is better to deal out books whose purpose it is to elucidate the principles of truth and justice, than trashy novels, flippant histories, and biographies of famous nobodies. In short, it is much better to be a law-librarian than
THE PUBLIC LIBRARIAN. His books extend on every side, And up and down the vistas wide His eye can take them in; He does not love these books at all, Their usefulness in big and small He counts as but a sin. And all day long he stands to serve The public with an aching nerve; He views them with disdain — The student, with his huge round glasses, The maiden fresh from high-school classes, With apathetic brain; The sentimental woman lorn, The farmer recent from his corn, The boy who thirsts for fun, The graytieard with a patent-right, The pedagogue from school at night, The fiction-gulping one. They ask for histories, reports, Accounts of turf and prize-ring sports, The census of the nation; Philosophy and science, too, The fresh romances not a few. Also " Degeneration." "They call these books," he snarls, and throws Them down in careless heaps and rows Before the ticket-holder; HeM like to cast them at his head, He wishes they might strike him dead, And with the reader moulder. But now, as for the shrine of saint, He seeks a spot whence sweet and faint A leathery smell exudes; And there, behind the gilded wires, For some loved rarity inquires, Which common gaze eludes. He wishes Omar would return, This vulgar mob of books to burn, While he, like Virgil's hero, Would shoulder off this precious case To some secluded private place, With temperature at zero. And there in this seraglio Of books not kept for public show, He'd feast his glowing eyes, — Forgetting that these beauties rare, Morocco-clad and passing fair, Are but the Sultan's prize. 481
