FRANK PIERCE HILL

THE LIBRARIAN TO-DAY

Speech by Frank P. Hill, chief librarian of the Brooklyn Public Library at a luncheon of the Library Association.

THE librarian of a generation or more ago had many advantages over his successor. He was always with and among his books, his desk was in the midst of them, and his work directly in touch with them. He had little to do with the details of the management of the library. In those days the initiative in all progressive schemes was taken by the board of trustees or committees of the board, and it usually happened that a policy would be adopted, or action taken without consultation with the librarian. In some libraries, even in large cities, the librarian did not attend the board or committee meetings. He was merely a "keeper of books," and being thus permitted to pursue his studious ways, his character and mind were enriched from his long and intimate association with books, and he became, as some one has described him, "a living catalogue and a walking encyclopedia."

The modern librarian, from the standpoint of personal gain, has undoubtedly lost much of the joy of being a librarian. He has a private office away from the collection, or he may be unfortunate enough to have his office altogether outside of the library building where the good smell of old books never reaches him.

The present-day librarian has taken on duties formerly borne by the trustees, and through force of circumstances rather than inclination, he is obliged to devote much of his time and attention to the business management of the institution.

The increase in the appropriations made to libraries, and the amount of work which an up-to-date library is expected to

perform have made it necessary for a librarian to become more of a business manager than his predecessor. He must see that the income of the library is wisely and economically expended, and that the needs of the institution are so represented to trustees and the city officials as to secure sufficient money to carry on the work. He must keep in contact with the busy workers and professional men of the community, so that he may be prompt in seizing every opportunity for extending the usefulness of the library.

SAMUEL REYNOLDS HOLE

MY GARDEN

Address by S. Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester, delivered at the annual festival of the Royal Gardeners' Benevolent Society, held in London, May 18, 1900. The Duke of Portland was in the chair.

YOUR GRACE, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:-I have passed eighty milestones on the journey of life, being now, as the old gardener described himself, an octo-geranium [Laughter], and my route has gone up to the highest summits and to the lowest depths. I have dined in a royal palace with the best queen that ever sat upon a throne, and I have taken tea-they said it was tea-with paupers in cottages of mud. I have lived with peasants and with princes, with millionaires and mechanics. I have had many famous men for my friends-statesmen and judges, and generals, and admirals, authors and artists-and there is no greater artist than the man who beautifies the land on which he lives. [Cheers.] I have been intimate with all sorts and conditions of men. I have been a friend to famous men, and I have tried to be a friend to infamous men-for I have been in a thieves' kitchen. High and low, rich and poor, with all sorts and conditions of men I have lived my life.

I have had a large amount of work, and I have had a large amount of play. They are not incongruous; they are inseparable from success. I sat one night by the side of my friend Mr. Thackeray, at a Punch dinner, and opposite to us sat Tom Taylor, who had just brought out two dramas, one at St. James's and the other at the Haymarket Theater, and he was in a silent and gloomy mood. Thackeray said to me, “All play and no work makes Tom a dull boy." [Laughter.] I have had a very varied experience of recreation, and I would rather speak of this to-night than of business and duty.

I took out a certificate for game when I was seventeen

years of age, and I repeated that process for half a century. I have been very fond of all sorts of games, beginning with the grandest game of all, cricket. [Hear, hear.] I have seen Lillywhite bowling to Fuller Pilch. But all my life I have loved a garden. The instinct may be suppressed. It is too often suppressed by the cares and more exciting pleasures of this life, but it is born in us all. It takes us with delight to the banks on which the violets grow, to the woods of the primrose, to the old hedges which used to be, before modern farming began, bowered over with wild roses, and to the buttercups and cowslips of the mead; and I have found this after fourscore years I maintain this—that there is no recreation which brings so much happiness and brightness into a man's life as the recreation of horticulture. [Cheers.]

The love of a garden, like love itself, like charity, never fails. The time comes when the horseman deviates from the stiff timber and the flowing brook and seeks peace and safety through the gate into the lane. [Laughter.] The time comes to the gunner when the erratic jacksnipe, the nimble cony, the driven partridge and pheasant elude his aim; the time comes when the batsman arrives too late, and is run out, panting and breathless; or when, missing a catch, he is insulted with a question having reference to the price of butter [laughter]; but the joys of horticulture never fail, from the time when the baby tries to grip the artificial flower from its nurse's bonnet to the time of the octo-geranium [laughter], until the time when a man stands before his friends, as now, with snow on his head but with summer always in his heart. [Cheers.] I stand here to return thanks for horticulture.

There is not a gardener here to-night who won't join in the general thanksgiving and for the special mercies which are vouchsafed to us of this generation. First let me speak of the grand additions which have been made to horticulture through the zeal and enterprise of the importer (it is impossible to mention that word without thinking of our friend Harry Veitch), and through the skill of the cultivators-the gardeners, the working gardeners, to whom we owe so much, and to whom we are invited to-night to give help in their time of need. On Wednesday next let every one go and see in the Temple Gar

dens the magnificent demonstrations of progress, from the orchids at five hundred pounds to the little rock-plants at sixpence. Do you know which is the most beautiful?—I don't. Again, I think we are to be congratulated on the great improvement which has been made in our garden literature. There never was a time when there was such abundant and able information from our horticultural press. Never since the days of Hooker, Loudon, and Paxton have there been works more helpful to the gardener than "The Flower Garden" of William Robinson, "The History of Gardening," by Miss Amherst, and the fascinating works by Miss Jekyll on "Wood and Garden." I welcome the sentimental element which has been introduced into the works on gardening, that element which appeals to the intellect and to the imagination. I have known so many young persons, anxious for information about the garden, who have been deterred by the dullness and monotony of those books which are written to instruct them. I even venture to plead for occasional gleams of humor.

Half a century ago it seemed to me that the garden promoted the greatest joy and usefulness of my life, and I tried to communicate to others the happiness which I had found myself. I wrote accordingly to the Gardeners' Chronicle and to The Florist, and although I was denounced as frivolous by a few stolid philosophers, I received such encouragement on the whole that I spread my wings and took a higher flight, and in a little book which I wrote about roses [cheers] I have, from that time to this, achieved the influence which I most desired to possess.

I think that we have great reason to be thankful, and to congratulate each other that not only has the love of gardening increased, but there is a far more refined ambition as to the arrangement of the garden. Some people say that it is a retrograde movement; but I say, when you go back to our old style, the English or the natural style, it may be retrograde, but it is the return of the vagabond to the right way. I do not depreciate for a moment the value of the introduction of half-hardy plants. I think there are places in which they are most appropriate. I do not fail to admire their combination with stonework around the palace, the castle, or other