The introduction of the Jenkes bill providing for the transfer of the copyright collection from the Patent Office to the library of Congress, however, presented another for the establishment of a free public library. This was pointed out in the following letter to the Chronicle, dated April 16, 1870, and signed" C. C. S.":

"By law three copies of every book copyrighted are sent to Washington; one for the Congressional library, one for the Smithsonian, and one for the Patent Office collection, which has just been unearthed or ungarreted by Mr. Jenkes. As the Smithsonian library has been turned over to the Congressional, the addition of the Patent Office collection would give some forty thousand volumes to the Congressional, of each of which it already possesses two copies. Now, why cannot these extra forty thousand volumes be formed into a library for the people, not of Washington alone, but of the entire country, as represented by the tens of thousands who are directly or indirectly brought to this city in consequence of its position as capital of the country."'*

The end of the decade 1865–1875 was marked, as the beginning had been, by the suggestion that a memorial free library be established. In 1865 it was a memorial to Lincoln that was contemplated. Now it was a memorial to that other great champion of emancipation, Charles Sumner, that was suggested. On March 11, 1874, Sumner died at his home in Washington. On the fourth of April E. J. L. wrote to the Chronicle suggesting that a memorial to Sumner should properly be erected by the colored race, and that it might well take the form of a library. The negro, he urged, had shown his appreciation of primary education, but the opportunities for continued study afforded by a public library were also needed. The cost of a monument or statue spent in books to form the nucleus of a library would * Chronicle, April 28, 1870.

be forever a means of higher education both to the people for whose rights Sumner had fought, and to all residents of Washington. Before many years sufficient money could be raised to erect a fire-proof building for the library. Then colored people would have the most fitting memorial for the man who was not only their best friend, but America's best scholar. "But if, instead of this," he concluded, "a monument is built, those who decide upon that way of showing their gratitude may sometime hear the reproach, 'We asked for bread and you gave us a stone.'"'

Mr. Watterston's plan for the transfer of the Washington Library to the public in 1849, the schemes for ward and parish libraries, the hopes from Mr. Corcoran, before the War; the proposition for a Lincoln memorial in 1865, the bill providing for a consolidation of the department libraries in 1866, the plans of the Clerks' Association regarding the same in 1867, the suggestion regarding the use of the copyright collection, the Sumner memorial; all had come to naught.

Nor was anything more done toward the establishment of a free public library until 1886. The history of the workingmen's library movement of that year and of the free library movement of the last decade of the century belongs to another chapter.

WILLIAM DUANE.

BY ALLAN C. CLARK.

(Read before the Society, February 13, 1905.)

"Lie on Duane, lie on for pay,

And Cheetham, lie thou too;

More against truth you cannot say

Than truth can say 'gainst you."

The Evening Post of New York, now very ancient and eminently decorous, let fly this scathing squib. A cut smarted and that accounts for this avenging thrust. For the mail coach had come to the city of Brotherly Love and with the initial issue, November 16, 1801, of the Evening Post. Promptly comes, November 21, in Duane's Aurora in Shakespearian paraphrase this contemptuous comment:

'Alexander Hamilton's daily paper has appeared in New York-it has appeared, weary and stale, flat-we know not whether unprofitable."

This was the commencement of caustic comment and mention of mistakes. These mentions were unappreciated, for says the Aurora:

"The New York Evening Post is not satisfied at our acknowledging a single instance of candor in that paper-we confess our mistake even in that single instance."

The Commercial Advertiser of New York is yet agoing. Between that and the Aurora was reciprocity of rebuke. The latter not once, even, dignified the former with a title. It was "Noah Webster's paper."

In the country's comparative youth the papers of diverse political creeds and of different mind within

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the party indulged in undignified denunciation; and so they have all along; and so do they now. The difference between newspapers, the outgrowth of rivalry, is not, however, altogether on party lines-it is so that whatever is right with one seems wrong with the other. Naught have I to say in passing as to improvement or deterioration of character in journalism. When Dickens stepped " upon the very brink and margin of the land of liberty," he heard the shrill yells of the newsboys: "Here's the morning's New York Sewer! Here's this morning's New York Stabber! Here's the New York Family Spy! Here's the New York Private Listener! Here's the New York Peeper! Here's the New York Plunder! Here's the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here's the New York Rowdy Journal! Here's all the New York papers!" Now, not all the newspapers, even in New York, are yellow.

The display of spite in the newspapers of our forefathers is the same as in those of their descendants and yet with a difference.

Cheetham, the co-subject with Duane in the rhyming squib that begins this paper, was the editor of the Citizen. He had defamed Coleman, editor of the Evening Post; so had one Thompson. Coleman called for retraction. Cheetham valued discretion and did retract. Coleman and Thompson resorted to the code of honor in Love Lane. Thompson was thrown in his own doorway dying. Coleman unconcernedly resumed his desk and dipped the quill that stabbed character.

It is within my own observation that a southwestern town so thrives that it supports two newspapers. The animosity of the rival sheets is such that the dictionaries have been exhausted and new abusives invented. No one could suppose that the editors might pass on the thoroughfare without personal encounter save for

the intervention of strong armed peacemakers. But the press of the Gazette broke and hardly had it when came the Mail with proffer of assistance. The revolution of the same cylinder printed Mail and Gazette and the abuse was hurled at close quarters very like the whirling mud from the wheels of a wagon in a miry road.

In the

These incidents illustrate the difference. former days it was real spite. In these days play spite, purely Pickwickian, for the excitement of the patrons and the emolument of the proprietors.

Sir Walter Scott says:

"Biography, the most interesting perhaps of every species of composition, loses all its interest with me when the shades and lights of the principal character are not accurately and faithfully detailed. . . . I can no more sympathize with a mere eulogist, than I can with a ranting hero upon the stage." -Life of Sir Walter Scott, John Gordon Lockhart, Vol. 11-98. Dr. Samuel Johnson theorizes:

"But biography has often been allotted to writers who seem very little acquainted with the nature of their task, or very negligent about the performance. They afford any other account than might be collected from public papers, but imagine themselves writing a life when they exhibit a chronological series of actions or preferment; and so little regard the manners or behavior of their heroes, that more knowledge may be gained of a man's real character, by a short conversation with one of his servants, than from a formal and studied narrative begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral. . . . If a life be delayed till interest and envy are at an end, we may hope for impartiality, but must expect little intelligence; for the incidents which give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are rarely transmitted by tradition."-Rambler, No. 60.