grade is always such not only by virtue of formation and adaptation but also by virtue of selection.  In human training one of the most potent of these selective agencies is the individual will, and to train that will and make it effective in the right direction there is nothing better than constant association with the records of past aims and past achievements.  This must be my excuse for saying so much of libraries in general, and of one library in particular, in an address on what I have ventured to give the name of Selective Education.

THE USES OF FICTION[2]

    [2] Read before the American Library Association, Asheville
        Conference, May 28, 1907.

Literature is becoming daily more of a dynamic and less of a static phenomenon.  In other days the great body of written records remained more or less stable and with its attendant body of tradition did its work by a sort of quiet pressure on that portion of the community just beneath it—­on a special class peculiarly subject to its influence.  To-day we have added to this effect that of a moving multitude of more or less ephemeral books, which appear, do their work, and pass on out of sight.  They are light, but they make up for their lack of weight by the speed and ease with which they move.  Owing to them the use of books is becoming less and less limited to a class, and more and more familiar to the masses.  The book nowadays is in motion.  Even the classics, the favorites of other days, have left their musty shelves and are moving out among the people.  Where one man knew and loved Shakespeare a century ago, a thousand know and love him to-day.  The literary blood is circulating and in so doing is giving life to the body politic.  In thus wearing itself out the book is creating a public appreciation that makes itself felt in a demand for reprinting, hence worthy books are surer of perpetuation in this swirling current than they were in the old time reservoir.  But besides these books whose literary life is continuous, though their paper and binding may wear out, there are other books that vanish utterly.  By the time that the material part of them needs renewing, the book itself has done its work.  Its value at that moment is not enough, or is not sufficiently appreciated, to warrant reprinting.  It drops out of sight and its place is taken by another, fresh from the press.  This part of our moving literature is what is called ephemeral, and properly so; but no stigma necessarily attaches to the name.  In the first place, it is impossible to draw a line between the ephemeral and the durable.  “One storm in the world’s history has never cleared off,” said the wit—­“the one we are having now.”  Yet the conditions of to-day, literary as well as meteorological, are not necessarily lasting.