terns of exquisite taste for gold and silver ware, papier-machè, furniture, and other elegant manufactures. Any young man may here fit himself to fill the first position in his trade that science, taste, and skill can make, and this, too, at cheap and easy terms as to time and money. Then there is a literary department, comprising reading room and lectures and other sources of useful entertainment and knowledge.
The Free Library, in the same building, is the most popular institution in the town, in origin, object, and use. It is the best exponent and illustration of the public spirit of the people. It was founded for and by them, and they owe it to no one else. This is as it should be and will be in times to come. Drinking Fountains are the order of the day. They at first originated as the benefactions of some generous individual, who set an impressive example to municipal authorities. Then they speedily grew to be the standing and regular institutions of the community. So it has been with the Drinking Fountains of Knowledge. Some munificent donor, like William B. Astor, of New York, or William Brown, of Liverpool—to use a homely simile—has "killed two birds with one stone:" he has founded a great library and opened its thousands of volumes to the people to read as free and cheap as water; and the library thus founded is to be a perpetual and effective monu-
