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Here alcoves might well be used, with no rigid steel stacks, but handsome wooden shelving.

Just few enough men could find quiet seats, with books all around them, a cozy window seat with a leaded window to look out of, not too many other readers or busy attendants to disturb their quiet by hunting books on the neighboring shelves.

A private or club library is a good subject for an architect to exploit, taking beautifully bound books as the key to his ornamental treatment. Quiet, artistic lights are appropriate, rich old woods and decorative rugs; everything that is taboo in a public library. The keynotes should be rest, comfort, literary cosiness, private proprietorship; if anything more, refined hospitality to personal friends.

Proprietary.

The old-fashioned Mercantile Library, of which some survive in vigor, is similar in support, but more democratic in membership, and ought to be treated architecturally more like a public library, without children’s rooms or such social science features.