ous infusion of that essence which we call personality accounted for them. It was because he wrote very much as he talked that he was such a delightful letter-writer. You could always visualise the man when you read his letters. He was inordinately conscientious about answering letters, and the demands made upon him in this way were often very heavy. Innumerable aspirants to a literary career, a large proportion of them women, appealed for advice and encouragement, and he always gave the one even if he had to withhold the other. He once said that he should like to have inscribed upon his tombstone: "The Epistolary Friend of Woman."

But we, his friends and fellowworkers, have more intimate associations with him than these, and there are certain phases of his mind and character that we shall long remember. We recall, for example, his open-mindedness his fair-mindedness his effort to learn and see your side of a question, and his willingness to accept your view if he found that your argument was sounder than his. He came out of a heated discussion without resentment, and some of his best friends were men and women with whom he differed radically on many points.

In one respect he was unusual; he was essentially a modest man (the word is used in its generic sense). He could fight other people's battles better than his own-press their claims to recognition more forcefully than he was willing to argue his own.

I think that few of us realize how well he bore his handicaps-how deeply he felt them. A man who had. long known him, but saw him seldom, lately said: "He was, intellectually, a good deal of a stimulus to me. Moreover, he taught me wisdom by the way he bore his afflictions and the happiness he got out of his ordinary interests. But he always seemed to me a most unordinary sort of man."

Perhaps the two characteristics which took the strongest hold upon those who knew him best were his capacity for, and his ideals of friend

ship, and a most engaging and unfailing sense of humor. He made warm friends in every walk of life and among people of all ages. One of the highest tributes continually paid him, and one that he valued at its full worth, was the affection of young people for him. His children's friends and his friends' children found him companionable, stimulating and exhilarating, and constantly sought his society. One of the young men who often visited him remarked not long ago: "I would rather talk with Mr. Swift than with any of my contemporaries; he seems younger to me. His ethical, like his literary standards, are high, and though you get these indirectly, you get them just the same."

Like most warm-hearted and impulsive men, he sometimes found himself doing battle for quite undeserving objects. A very seedy "down-andouter," bearing the name of a precious stone, once sought Mr. Swift's sympathy and aid, alleging that deafness had lost him a perfectly good job. His story was so simple, logical and moving that Mr. Swift at once set to work to provide the unfortunate with some means of livelihood. Numerous friends furnished the young man with temporary odd jobs, until it became evident that physical exertion was not his métier. his métier. Then the sufferer, with apparent great reluctance, suggested that if he could hire a type-writer, he could soon find work enough to buy the machine.. The proposition was acted upon, and the first month's rent was paid in advance - though not by the precious stone. Mr. Swift breathed freely for six weeks,-until, in fact, it was peremptorily brought to his notice that the jewel had sold the machine, and that somebody was responsible to the company for its value. It was in crises such as these that Mr. Swift's sense of humor came to his rescue, and carried him bravely through: "If a man asks for bread, give him a typewriter."

During the last two years the buoyancy that had always been so constant a factor in his life, lessened somewhat

elav

法

15

I first met Lindsay Swift in the early eighties, when he was preparing a list of Frankliniana. Mere bibliography is not inspiring, and yet he made that particular list live by his genuine enthusiasm for the great American, and by his knowledge of what he represented and accomplished. It was the same with whatever Swift undertook. He obtained facts open to all, but he arranged them in his own manner and clothed them with his own personality. No one but a true scholar can do that, and Swift's scholarship in literature was preeminent. He did not overpower by weight of learning, nor did he rest upon his reading, which was wide and somewhat miscellaneous in character. But he knew his subject and had an unfailing certainty in his authorities, a quality that belongs only to one possessing a highly delicate yet well-trained critical study. A few minutes' conversation with him on a question of literature would bring out opinions keenly penetrating and stamped with individuality. It was a touch of originality enhanced in charm by his gift of expression. He used only good English pure English - unsullied by the vulgarities and indolent habits of the day.

Good as was his conversation, the effect was not lasting. The succession of good things could not be carried in remembrance. But in his printed volumes the charm and instruction persist, and, to one who knew him, recall the somewhat abstracted manner, the sudden plunge and the often whimsical remark summing up the question. A good sense of humor, a real capacity for wit, and a certain broad way of looking on life made his sentences shine. His "History of Brook Farm" is a masterpiece, so reverent in appreciation of the good, so charitable to the weaknesses, and so sensible of the absurd or comic incident or twist in character. Raise a question on the American Revolu

tion, on poetry, on feminism, or on the latest novel, and he would be equally at home, armed with comparisons or illustrations that surprised and, better, awakened dissent. He should have been a censor, a critic like Dryden or Dr. Johnson, independent and free to exercise his special faculty yet no one knew better the value of drudgery and hard toil in gaining knowledge and reputation, and no one gave more unselfishly. As an independent he could have produced much more than he did; but he exercised a wider influence as Editor of the Library Publications, and he alone stood for scholarship in the perhaps necessary popularizing of reading imposed upon the library of to-day. He gave distinction to the institution.

WORTHINGTON CHAUNCEY FORD.

To the Editor of LIBRARY LIFE.

I have your letter of October 27, touching the memory of Mr. Swift. Although my acquaintance with Mr. Swift was never intimate, I have known him many years, and I always had him in high regard. He was a man whom the Library would indeed do well to honor. Meeting him only casually, as I did, one was most struck by his universal and apparently exhaustless knowledge. Ask him what you would, he always seemed to be filled, for the occasion, with the particular kind of information of which you were in search. I have met him on the steps of the Library, and had him entertain me for half an hour with some commentary on something I had written, in which he unfolded to me all sorts of things which I should have been delighted to know before I wrote and tried to inform the public, but which came to me more or less like a cold bath, after I had written.

BROOKS ADAMS.

Lindsay Swift was one of those busy men who are never too busy to hold out a helping hand. It must be twenty-five years since I first turned to him for the sort of assistance which a person highly skilled in the handling of books is capable of giving to a comparative beginner. He gave most generously, then and ever since. He was the soul of loyalty to his friends, often lame dogs that he persisted in helping over stiles, to his college, to the Library - and to every loyalty he was constantly ready to pay the toll of time and trouble. It was a perpetual wonder that there was always time for something else, for study and production of his own which gave him a high place among contributors to the biographical, critical, and historical literature of his generation. To have had a man of Lindsay Swift's type of mind and character attached to the working staff of any library for so long a term of years was a possession, an adornment, to be remembered with unfailing gratitude. M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE.

The following minute regarding Mr. | Swift was adopted by the Trustees of the Library on Friday, October 14, 1921:

"Lindsay Swift, an employee of the Public Library of the City of Boston for 43 years, 3 months and 15 days, died suddenly in Cambridge on September 4, 1921. Mr. Swift entered the service of the Library in the Catalogue Department on May 27, 1878. On February 7, 1896, he became Editor of Library Publications, which position he held at the time of his death. Under his direction and through his fine literary taste and judgment the publications of the Boston Public Library achieved an enviable position in the library world. Always a gentleman, combining the outlook and taste of a scholar with a keen sense of humor, sympathy and candor outspoken, he endeared himself to his associates. The Board of Trustees gratefully place upon record their appreciation of his long, faithful and efficient service."

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

Lindsay Swift, editor of the Library publications, son of John Lindsay Swift and Sarah Edes Allen, was born at Boston, July 29, 1856. His father was captain of the 41st Massachusetts Volunteers, and afterward judge advocate of Louisiana, during the Civil War; later, he was deputy collector of the port of Boston.

Lindsay Swift was prepared for college at the Roxbury Latin School and W. N. Eayrs's private school, Boston, and was graduated A.B. from Harvard with the class of 1877. Among his roommates in college was. E. B. Hunt, of the class of 1878, afterwards chief cataloguer in the Library; the initials L. S., cut in the window-sill at Thayer 67, may still be seen. His favorite authors at this period were Dickens and Hardy; for the Nation he wrote a criticism of Hardy's "Return of the Native." His most serious college work was done in the course in American history given by Professor Henry Adams, and to this severe training he always ascribed his success as writer and editor.

In 1877 he entered the composing room of Rand, Avery & Co., making there a first-hand acquaintance with

printing and proof-reading; but from May 27, 1878, he was continuously employed in the Library, first as assistant in the Catalogue Department, then as Editor of Library Publications.

His own published writings were "Brook Farm: its members, scholars and visitors," 1900; "Literary landmarks of Boston," 1903; "Benjamin Franklin," 1910; "William Lloyd Garrison," 1911; memoirs (Hunt, Strobel), reviews, and papers on library subjects. He edited "The great debate between Hayne and Webster," 1898, and Mellen Chamberlain's "John Adams, the statesman of the American Revolution," 1898. His latest work was his share in the preparation of the report of his class on the 40th anniversary of their graduation, 1917.

Mr. Swift was a member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, Massachusetts Commandery; Colonial Society of Massachusetts; Massachusetts Historical Society; and Boston City Club.

He was married at Boston, July 19, 1881, to Katharine Agnese Jackson, of Abington; they have always lived at 388 Park St., West Roxbury, where Mr. Swift had a famous garden - a source, first of health, then of unfailing delight, to the enthusiastic gardener. Their children are Katharine Lindsay (married to Frederick Abildgaard Fenger, Cornell, 1906), Allen (Harvard, 1909, married), Harriet (Vassar, 1911), and Agnese. His daughter Katharine was in charge of the Barton-Ticknor Library from Feb. 2, 1911, to Sept. 23, 1912.

Mr. Swift died at Cambridge, of dilatation of the heart, Sunday, Sept. 11, 1921, in his 66th year. As befitted so loyal and eminent a son of Harvard, his funeral service on the following Friday, was held in Appleton Chapel. Honorary pallbearers were his classmates, President A. Lawrence Lowell, James Byrne, A. B. Denny, F. C. Hatch, S. E. Jennison, E. S. Martin; from the Library, Mr. Fleischner and Mr. Chevalier; ex-Senator A. J. Beveridge and Worthington C. Ford, the historian. The burial was at Forest Hills Cemetery.

L. E. T.

SIGNAL PERSONALITIES. "The Unknown Dead" - the words have been continually in our ears the past few weeks. All the nations of the world have united in glorifying

the unknown soldier. The nameless hero has all at once taken on an unsuspected significance. We did not recognize him while he was among us; let us heap honors upon his grave.

So with our two Library heroes. We all liked breezy Frank Krigel, with his cheery smile, his elastic step, his prompt, willing spirit. We loved Lindsay Swift - genial, whimsical, full of enthusiasm and helpfulness, in spite of deafness and the "chronic apoplexy," about which he joked so bravely.

But we did not appreciate these men at their full value; we had no conception of the honors that would be paid to these daily associates of ours, once they were gone beyond recall. Krigel dies, and his city gives his name to one of its public squares a lasting memorial to a heroic spirit. Swift dies, and his college- America's greatest university-buries him from its own chapel, and college presidents and writers of international fame walk beside his casket.

"There are more signal personalities about you now than you can well be conscious of. Don't let anybody cheapen them." We live in the midst of Unknown Soldiers, as heroic as any that are gone; let us make the most of them while they live. Let us wait and see before we depreciate. The memory of these two men-the soldier, the scholar-is a stirring incitement to a higher conception of our associates. One is tempted to eulogy, but others have been glad to praise these friends

of ours. If we turn our eyes about upon our living comrades we may discover within our own department some signal personality, some unknown soldier, of whom we can show our appreciation while he is yet beside us. Let us give "full credit and value" to the men and women with whom we work; sometime we shall realize how fine they were.

LIBRARY LIFE extends a cordial welcome to the youngest member of the Library family, the Jeffries Point Reading Room, and to its Librarian, Miss Mathilde di Bernardi, who has written an interesting account of the opening on October 15th, to be pub

lished in the next issue.

The sonnet, "A Book Man," is from the pen of Miss Mary A. Bartlett, an associate of Mr. Swift in the Catalogue Department from 1897 to 1911, whom it is a pleasure to re-introduce to the members of the staff. The sonnet was suggested by Swift's characteristic retort when someone spoke of scholarship in the Library: "Don't profane the sacred name of scholar; I am a book man." It is interesting to remember that an earlier sonnet by Miss Bartlett, entitled "The Prism," was published on the occasion of the death of Mr. E. B. Hunt, who had been Mr. Swift's college roommate.

Every member of the staff should make an effort to see the remarkable exhibit of "The Fatherless Children of France Their Book," in the Fine Arts Exhibition Room during the fortnight beginning November 14th. It is seldom that so much original material autographs, manuscripts, of the highest value and interest, has been paintings and drawings-of shown in the Library at any one time.

The editors regret that the pressure of extraordinary matter this month has compelled the postponement to the next issue of important book reviews and much departmental news.

At the moment of going to press, we learn with regret of the death of Thomas F. Boyle, Trustee of the Library from 1902 to 1912.

DR. PUTNAM'S ADDRESS.

On Tuesday noon, October 18, Dr. Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress, spoke informally to the staff of the Boston Public Library. After referring to his own former connection with the Library, he said:

As I think of the relation of the individual here to the institution and to his work, the things which I feel that he should especially value are these:

In the first place, the beauty of your building. I never come back to this building without a shock of exultation, a thrill; and when I came here for that meeting one evening last summer, when it was completely free and radiant, I thought nothing so exquisite in modern architecture had ever touched my eyes or my feelings. Now this is something - an exquisite influence for refinement upon any person doing even the most elementary work within its portals.

Second, this is an institution with a past, with a very great prestige which it has not lost, an institution with a primacy among the great municipal libraries of the United States, and in many respects still preserving that primacy.

If you

Third, the organization. have studied the constitutions of other municipal libraries, you will realize how fortunate the Boston Public Library is, with its small Board of Trustees, responsible in a general way to the city administration, but an independent corporation, nevertheless, in many respects. No library in the United States, so far as I know, has so fortunate a constitution, fortunate for efficiency.

But there is also the work itself, and as to this, what I have to say is equally true of libraries and librarians everywhere. We do not often enough stop to think what a completely unique subject matter it is that we are dealing with, of the tremendously farreaching power and influence it may exercise upon innumerable people in innumerable ways. That is true of

books in general, and should dignify every book that passes through our hands. We ought never to handle a book without thinking of the power or energy of that book.

Similarly, we ought never to handle a reader without individualizing him in relation to his book. It is very difficult in the rush and turmoil, when two and a half million books have to be hurried out every year, to realize that the reader is the unit. The reader is to himself all in all; the fact that there are other readers signifies nothing to him. He is the unit and he is entitled to be considered as the unit.

One ought to think also of another matter, another aspect of the significance of what we do in relation to the dignity that belongs to the book itself, a dignity which is reflected on the meanest operation that goes to preparing the book for the reader. I have in mind what would be called the meanest, like putting on a label, a bookplate, and all that preliminary detail. We ought to give There is no mean dignity to that.

work in a library. We talk about the library profession and we all have a sort of theory of what a learned profession is, like medicine; if challenged, perhaps we might find it a little difficult to see how there can be a professional way of putting on a label. Now believe me, there is. No worker in a library who is content to be indifferent, to be slovenly in putting the label on the back of a book, is going to rise to professional values. with regard to books, or to any powerful or influential relation with them.

I think it was Charles Lamb who said of somebody, "He had small knowledge of letters, for his reading never extended beyond the Gentleman's Magazine; but he had a pride in literature from being among books, for he was a librarian."

There

is the problem of interest, cheerfulness, optimism of a worker in a library. He would gladly recognize that there is something very fine about literature, something very stimulating in the work of a librarian, but he