Excerpt from Fifty-Ninth Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Mercantile Library Company of Philadelphia: January 1882 In submitting herewith their Fifty-ninth Annual Report, the Board of Management have little to present that is novel. The year just closed has not been With us an eventful one in any re spect. In some particulars there has been progress, though of no very marked character. While its influence has not been all that it ought and perhaps might have been, still the institution has been, in a quiet way doing 3 very important work in stimula ting and shaping the intellectual life of this community. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.