The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
Library, and its Defects.
For the same purpose a library is provided, the exclusive property of the pensioners. A ticket of admission from the chaplain is required, and no book may be taken out of the room, except in cases of severe illness. Travels, voyages, and military narratives are favourite books. The better novels are also popular with them. Here, also, it is seen how much of benefit, with good counsel from a Christian friend, with whom they can make familiar, their love of reading may be directed to their profit, and to the further- ance of their best interests. But an old-fashioned arrange- ment tends very greatly to interfere with the benefit which the library might otherwise more fully confer. It contains many excellent books, but the pensioners are old and infirm, and their sight is weak. In the long winter evenings, so favourable for reading, the library would be much more resorted to, but it has no gas, nor is even a candle permitted. The old oil lamps give so dim and misty a light, that the library is quite useless to them practically when it would be most serviceable. It certainly would greatly add to their comfort, and, it may be hoped, to their profit too, if they received the advantage of modern invention, and had the benefit of gas, considered by practical men as even less dangerous to the safety of buildings than oil. | |