Reading at the Local Centre

TILL I took on the work of a local librarian under the Essex County Library I think I had never felt what a reality the phrase, “Republic of Letters,” stands for. I had vaguely thought that it implied a sort of mental relationship between all book lovers and creators, but that it could connote such a real community of interest and feeling, as I have seen growing up in Bulphan since we started just a year ago, I should not have thought possible. I hope I shall not be misunderstood, or give the impression that the millenium has arrived, or that we have sloughed off our ordinary selves and are all hobnobbing together in consequence of taking a ticket under the Carnegie scheme,—but just one common factor we have discovered between us: we all come to the library because we are honestly interested in books; not because we ought to be, but because we are.