Louis in possessing
a pretty little park at the heart of the city, overlooking the river;
also she has the advantage of lying to the east of the great stream,
instead of to the west, so that, in late afternoon, when the sun
splashes down into the mysterious deserted reaches of the Arkansas
flats, across the way, sending splatterings of furious color across the
sky, one may seat oneself on a bench in the park and witness a
stupendous natural masterpiece. A sunset over the sea can be no more
wonderful than a sunset over this terrible, beautiful, inspiring,
enigmatic domineering flood. Or one may see the sunset from the
readingroom of the Cossitt Library, with its fine bay window commanding
the river almost as though it were the window of a pilot-house.
The Cossitt Library is only one of several free libraries in the city.
There is, for example, a free library in connection with the Goodwyn
Institute, an establishment having an endowment of half a million
dollars, left to Memphis by the late William A. Goodwyn. The Goodwyn
Institute provides courses of free lectures, by well-known persons, on a
great variety of subjects. The library is designed to add to the
educational work. Books are not, however, loaned, as they are from the
Cossitt Library, an institution to which I found myself returning more
than once; now for a book, now to look at the interesting collection of
mound-builder relics contained in an upper room, now merely because it
is a place of such reposeful hospitality that I liked to make excuses to
go back.
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