and civic-minded Gospel. A transcript of Dawson’s speech can be found below: A great library contains the diary of the human race; when the books of mankind are gathered together we can sit down and read the solemn story of Man’s history. Here in this room are gathered together the great diaries of the human race, the record of its thoughts, its struggles, its doings. So that a library may be regarded as the solemn chamber in which man can take counsel with all that have been wise and great and good and glorious among the men that have gone before him. (Cheers) Men are very apt to think that the universe inspired their little creed. When a man has worked himself into an unwise heat, a good place for him to go is a great library, and that will quiet him down admirably. The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, of elevated opinion. One of the greatest and happiest things about this Corporation Library [is that], supported as it is by rates and administered by the Corporation, it isthe expression of a conviction on your part that a town exists for moral and intellectual purposes. A great town like this has not done all of its duty when it has put in action a set of ingenious contrivances for cleaning and lighting the streets, for breaking stones and for mending ways; and has not fulfilled its highest function even when it has given the people of the town the best system of drainage... I had rather a great book of a great picture fell into the hands of the Corporation than into the hands of an individual – a great picture God never intended to be painted for the delight of but one noble family, which maybe shut away through the whim of its owner. But the moment you put great works into the hands of the corporate body like this
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