the researches of public men and scholars; and concentrating at Washington the copyright records and business of the United States, which has greatly enlarged the national library since 1870, when the plan was carried into effect. He has also lectured on library science, and has selected a vast number of books for the library, which increased during his administration from seventy thousand volumes in 1861, to seven hundred and fifty thousand in 1897.
Doctor Spofford has been President of the Cincinnati and the Washington Literary clubs, of the Washington Library Association; vice-president of the Columbia Historical Society, and of the Washington National Monument Society. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Historical Association, the Washington Archeological Society, and other societies and clubs too numerous to mention.
He is the author of a "Manual of Parliamentary Rules" (1884); and "A Book for all Readers," designed as an aid to the collection, use and preservation of books, (1900). He edited the "American Almanac and Treasury of Facts" (12 vols., for the years 1878-89); the "Library of Choice Literature (10 vols., 1881); the "Library of Wit and Humor" (5 vols., 1884); "Library of Historic Characters" (10 vols., 1893). He received the degree of LL.D. from Amherst college in 1882. In regard to politics, he says, "I hold a position quite independent of party, while cherishing my own views of public questions." He is unattached to any church or ethical society, and he is uncommitted to philosophical movements. "I owe much to the poets," he says, "especially to Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton and Tennyson; to the biographies of Gibbon, Rousseau and Franklin; to the Bible; to Goldsmith and Walter Scott; and to Emerson, whose writings I have found among the finest intellectual tonics in all literature." "Riding on horseback has been for fifty years my physical exercise, full of stimulus and delight. My favorite relaxation is travel, seeking new places and scenery every year." "Complex causes operated in influencing my career, but having been addicted to reading from childhood, the passion for books was the paramount motive in my choice of a life-work"; and he adds, "I owe more to private study than to any other influence." "Postponement to more convenient seasons that fail to arrive, is what ails us all; and to young Americans he further says, "the love of labor carried through life is the best sheet-anchor."
