Chapter II: Part 2

Miss Bullard, of the Seymour Library, Auburn, N. Y., reports a decrease in fiction from sixty-five (65) to fifty-eight (58) per cent in the last five years. She says: "I have endeavored, year by year, to gain the confidence of the younger portion of our subscribers in my ability to always furnish them with interesting reading, and have thus been able to turn them from the domain of fiction into the more useful fields of literature. Another noticeable and encouraging feature of the library is the increasing use made of it by pupils in the high school in connection with school-work."

Mr. Larned, of the Young Men's Library of Buffalo, N. Y., writes: "I think the little catalogue is doing a great deal of good among our young readers and among parents and teachers. We exert what personal influence we can in the library, but there are no other special measures that we employ." The catalogue, a carefully chosen list of books for young readers, with stars placed against those specially recommended, includes, besides books mentioned in other letters, the Boy's Froissart and King Arthur, Miss Tuckey's Joan of Arc, Le Liefde's Great Dutch Admirals, Eggleston's Famous American Indians, Bryan's History of the United States, Verne's Exploration of the World, Du Chaillu's books, What Mr. Darwin Saw, Science Primers, Faraday's Chemical History of a Candle, Smiles's Biographies, Clodd's Childhood of the World, Viollet Le Duc's Learning to Draw, Dana's Household Book of Poetry, Uncle Remus, Sir Roger de Coverley, several pages on out and in door games, hunting and fishing, with plenty of myths and fairy tales, an annotated selection of historical novels, and a short list of good stories.

The Friends' Free Library, Germantown, Pa., still excludes all fiction except a few carefully chosen stories for children. The report of the committee says: "Our example has been serviceable in stimulating some other library committees and communities to use more discrimination in their selection of books than may have been the case with them in the past. From our own precious children we would fain keep away the threatening contamination, if in our power to do so, the divine law of love to our neighbor thence instructs us to use the opportunity to put far away the evil from him also." The representatives of the religious Society of Friends for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, have published during the year a protest against demoralizing literature and art, taking the ground that the national standard of moral purity is lowered, and the sanctity of marriage weakened, by most of the books, pictures, and theatrical exhibitions of to-day.

The current report of the Cincinnati public schools gives a full account of the celebrations of authors' birthdays in the last two years, and the superintendent, the Hon. John B. Peaslee, LL.D., in an address on moral and literary training in school, urges that the custom, so successfully begun, shall be kept up, and that children in all grades of schools shall be required to learn every week a few lines of good poetry, instead of choosing for themselves either verse or prose for declamation. Mr. Merrill asks in his last report for coooperation between the school and the library, and says in a letter: "I read a paper some time ago which was published in a teachers' magazine, and have addressed our Cincinnati teachers. We purchased a number of the catalogues of the Young Men's Library of Buffalo, and have written in our corresponding shelf numbers. A few of our teachers have also obtained these catalogues. I judge that the children are beginning to take out better books than formerly. The celebration of authors' days in the schools has been very beneficial in making the children acquainted with some of the best literature in the libraries as well as with the use of books of reference."

Miss Stevens, of the Public Library, Toledo, Ohio, says: "We are fond of children, and suggest to them books that they will like. Give a popular boy a good book, and there is not much rest for that book. Librarians should like children."

Mr. Poole, of the Chicago Public Library, writes: "I have met the principals of the schools, and have addressed them on their duties in regulating the reading of their pupils, and advising their pupils as to what to read and how to read. My talk has awakened some interest in the teachers, and a committee has been appointed to consider what can be done about it."

Mr. Carnes, of the Odd Fellows' Library Association, San Francisco, fires this shot in his report: "Even the child knows that forbidden fruit is the sweetest on the branch. If you wish to compel a boy to read a given book, strictly forbid him even to take it from the shelves. The tabooed books will somehow be secured in spite of their withdrawal."

Mr. Metcalf, of the Wells School, Boston, who told at the conference of 1879 of his work in encouraging a love for good, careful, and critical reading, writes: "My girls have bought Scott's Talisman, and we have read it together. I have now sent in a request for forty copies of Ivanhoe. My second class have read, on the same plan, this year, Mrs. Whitney's We Girls, and the third class have finished Towle's Pizarro, and are now reading Leslie Goldthwaite. The City Council refused, last year, to appropriate the $1,000 asked for. When we have the means, all our grammar and high school masters will be able to order from the library such books as are suited to their classes. This plan introduces the children to a kind of reading somewhat better than would otherwise reach them, and, best of all, it gives them great facility in expression."

Hartford, which has now no free circulating library, but hopes for one within two years, still keeps the old district system of schools, and several of these schools have a library fund. Mr. Barrows, principal of the Brown School, writes: "Our library contains the usual school reference-books. Recently we have added quite a number of books especially adapted to interest and instruct children, such as The Boy Travellers, Miss Yonge's Histories, Butterworth's Zigzag Journeys, Forbes's Fairy Geography, etc. The children are not permitted to take these books away from the building. Pupils are invited to bring such additional facts in geography, or history, as they may obtain by reading. Topics are assigned. Should spices be the topic, one pupil would read up concerning cloves; another nutmeg, etc. Again, pupils are allowed to make their own selections, and invited to give, at a specified time, any facts in geography, history, natural science, manufactures, inventions, etc. For this extra work extra credits are given. Our object is to cause pupils to realize the conscious and abiding pleasure that comes by instructive reading; to encourage such as have not been readers to read, and to influence such as have been readers of trash to become readers of profitable books. The result, so far, is very encouraging. Many have become enthusiastic readers, and can give more facts and information thus obtained than we have time to hear. As the Christmas holidays approached, many signified a desire that their presents might be books, such as we have in our library; for they do not have time at school to exhaust the reading of these books, and consequently do not lose their interest."

Within the last few months Mr. Northrop, Secretary of the Board of Education of Connecticut, has distributed in the high schools and upper classes of the grammar schools of the State, blanks to be filled by the pupils with the kind of reading that they like best, and the names of their favorite authors. Several hundred of these circulars were destroyed when the Hartford High School was burned last winter. The publication of a list of books suitable for boys and girls has been delayed, but Mr. Holbrook, of the Morgan School, Clinton, Conn., who prepared the list, writes concerning his work in school: "I have the practical disbursement of three or four hundred dollars a year for books. In the high school, in my walks at recess among the pupils, I inquire into their reading, try to arouse some enthusiasm, and then, when the iron is hot, I make the proposition that if they will promise to read nothing but what I give them I will make out a schedule for them. A pupil spending one hour, even less, a day, religiously observing the time, will, in five years, have read every book that should be read in the library. Those who agree to the above proposition I immediately start on the Epochs of History, turning aside at proper times to read some historical novel. When that is done I give them Motley, then Dickens, or Prescott, or Macaulay, Hawthorne, Thackeray, Don Quixote. Cooper I depend on as a lure for younger readers. When they have read about enough (in my opinion), I invite them to go a little higher. Whenever they come to the office and look helplessly about, I immediately jump up from my work, and, solving the personal equation, pick out two or three books which I think adapted first to interest, and then instruct. I try to welcome their appearance, assuring them that the books are to be read, urging the older ones to read carefully and with thought. Some I benefit; others are too firmly wedded to their idols, Mrs. Holmes and Southworth. Finally, it is my aim to send them away from school with their eyes opened to the fact that they have, the majority, been reading to no purpose; that there are better, higher, and nobler books than they ever dreamed of. Of course I don't always accomplish this; but he who aims at the sun will go higher than one aiming at the top of the barn."

A commission of sixteen ladies was appointed last year, by the Connecticut Congregational Club, to select and print a catalogue of books for Sunday Schools. During the year it has examined one hundred and eighty-four, almost all reprints of well-known books, and has selected one hundred. At least one annotated Sunday-School catalogue was prepared before the appointment of the commission, directing the attention of children to such books as Tom Brown's School Days and Higginson's Young Folks' Book of American Explorers, and of older readers to Stanley's Jewish Church, Martineau's Household Education, Robertson's Sermons, Sister Dora, Hypatia, Charles Kingsley's Life, and Atkinson's Right Use of Books.

The conclusions to which these opinions, from libraries and schools in ten different States, lead us, are these: 1. The number of fathers and mothers who directly supervise their children's reading, limiting their number of library books to those which they themselves have read, and requiring a verbal or written account of each before another is taken, is small.

2. The number of teachers who read and appreciate the best books, or take pains to search in libraries for those which illustrate lessons, or are good outside reading for the pupils, is also small.

3. The high schools, normal schools, and colleges are every year sending out young men and women with little knowledge of books except text-books and poor novels.

4. In towns and cities with free libraries, much may be and has been done by establishing direct communication between libraries and schools, making schools branch libraries.

5. This can be done only by insisting that teachers in such towns and cities shall know something of literature, and by refusing to grant certificates to teachers who, in the course of an hour's talk, do not show themselves well enough informed to guide children to a love of good books. The classes now reading under Mr. Metcalf's direction in Boston, or celebrating authors' days and the founding of their own state in Cincinnati, will be, in a few years, the teachers, the fathers, or the mothers of a new generation, and the result of their reading may be expected to appear in the awakened intelligence of their pupils and children.

6. Daily newspapers may be used with advantage in schools to encourage children to read on current events and to verify references.

7. Direct personal intercourse of librarians and assistants with children is the surest way of gaining influence over them. Miss Stevens, of Toledo, has put the secret of the whole matter, so far as we are concerned, into four words: "Librarians should like children." It may be added that a librarian or assistant in charge of circulation should never be too busy to talk with children and find out what they need. Bibliography and learning of all kinds have their places in a library; but the counter where children go needs no abstracted scholar, absorbed in first editions or black-letter, but a winsome friend, to meet them more than halfway, patiently answer their questions, "and by slow degrees subdue them to the useful and the good."

READING OF THE YOUNG

Miss Hewins made a later report on the same subject [see the previous article] in a paper presented before the World's Library Congress in 1893. In this paper, given below, she has summarized several of the early yearly reports made at the meetings of the A. L. A., all of which are of great interest as a record of the work of various libraries.

In the Government report on libraries, 1876, the relation of public libraries and the young was treated by Mr. W. I. Fletcher, who discussed age-restrictions, direction of reading, choice of books, and incidentally the relation of libraries to schools, referring to librarians and trustees as "the trainers of gymnasts who seek to provide that which will be of greatest service to their men." The report was suggestive, and called for several radical changes in the usual management of libraries. No statistics were given, for none had been called for, and the number of libraries which were working in the modern spirit was not large. Mr. Green, in his paper at the Philadelphia conference of 1876 (L. j. 1: 74), gave some suggestions as to how to teach school boys and girls the use of books, and in one or two of the discussions the influence of a librarian on young readers was noticed, but the American Library Association did not give much time to the subject till the Boston conference of 1879, when a whole session was devoted to schools, libraries, and fiction (L. j. 4:319), the general expression of opinion being similar to the formula expressed in the paper by Miss Mary A. Bean, "Lessen the quantity and improve the quality." In 1881, Mr. J. N. Larned, of the Buffalo Young Men's Library, issued his pamphlet, "Books for young readers." The report on "Boys' and girls' reading" which I had the honor of making at the Cincinnati conference of 1882 has answers from some 25 librarians to the question "What are you doing to encourage a love of good reading in boys and girls?" (L. j. 7:182.) Several speak of special catalogs or bulletins, most of personal interest in and friendship with young readers. One writes, "Give a popular boy a good book, and there is not much rest for that book. Librarians should like children." It was in 1883 that, by the suggestion and advice of our lamented friend, Frederick Leypoldt, I published a little classified pamphlet, "Books for the young." In January of the same year the Library Journal began a department of "Literature for the young," which was transferred at the end of the year to the Publishers' Weekly, where it still remains. The report on the subject, made for the Buffalo conference by Miss Bean, is on the same lines as the former one, with the addition of the experience of some smaller libraries. She says, "I believe the Lynn library has hit a fundamental truth, and applied the sovereign remedy, so far as the question concerns public libraries, in its 'one-book-a-week' rule for pupils of the schools."

Miss Hannah P. James's report at the Lake George conference in 1885 (L. j. 10:278) sums up the information received from 75 sources in some suggestions for work in connection with school and home, suggesting the publication of book lists in local papers, supervision of children's reading if authority is given by parents, and the limitation of school children's book to one or two a week. At the St. Louis conference of 1889 Miss Mary Sargent reported on "Reading for the young" (L. j. 14:226), One librarian fears that lists of books prepared for boys and girls will soon become lists to be avoided by them, on account of young people's jealous suspicion of undue influence. Sargent's "Reading for the young" was published just after the White Mountain conference of 1890, and the subject was not discussed in San Francisco in 1891 or at Lakewood in 1892 except in relation to schools.

The Ladies' Commission on Sunday school books is at least five years older than the American Library Association. It has done good service in printing lists of books specially adapted to Unitarian Sunday schools, others unfitted for them only by a few doctrinal pages or sentences, and a third class recommended as household friends on account of their interests, literary value, and good tone. The Church Library Association stands in the same relation to Episcopal Sunday schools, recommending in yearly pamphlets:

1. Books bearing directly on church life, history, and doctrine.

2. Books recommended, but not distinctly church books.

The Connecticut Ladies' Commission has, at the request of the Connecticut Congregational Club, published since 1881 several carefully chosen and annotated lists.

The National Young Folks' Reading Circle, the Chautauqua Young Folks' Reading Union, and the Columbian Reading Union, the latter a Catholic society, the others undenominational, have published good lists for young readers. The Catholic Church also recommends many recent stories for children which have no reference to doctrines or differences in belief.

One hundred and fifty-two out of 160 libraries have answered the following questions:

1. Are your children's books kept by themselves?

2. Are they classified, and how?

3. Have they a separate card catalog or printed finding list?

4. Are they covered?

5. Do you enforce rules with regard to clean hands?

6. Have you an age limit, and if so, what is it?

7. Do you allow more than one book a week on a child's card?

8. Are children's cards different in color from others?

9. What authors are most read by children who take books from your library?

10. What methods have you of directing their reading? Have you a special assistant for them, or are they encouraged to consult the librarian and all the assistants?

11. Have you a children's reading room?

Seventy-seven reply to the first question that their children's books are kept by themselves, 22 that stories or other books are separate from the rest of the library, and 53 that there is no juvenile division.

Three answer simply "Yes" to the second question, 24 have adopted the Dewey system, in two or three cases with the Cutter author marks, 4 the Cutter, and 1 the Linderfelt system; 10 arrange by authors, 18 by subjects, 4 by authors and subjects, 42 report methods of their own or classification like the rest of the library, and 46 do not classify children's books at all.

In answer to the third question, 6 libraries report both a separate card catalog and finding list, 43 a finding list for sale or distribution, 15 a card catalog for children, and 88 no separate list. Of the printed finding lists 4 are Sargent's, 1 Larned's, 2 Hardy's, and 2 Miss James's.

The fourth question relates to covering books for children. Eighty-five libraries do not cover them, 30 cover some, either those with light bindings or others that have become soiled and worn, 35 cover all, and 2 do not report.

In reply to the fifth question, 45 libraries require that children's hands shall be clean before they can take books from the library, or at least when they use books or periodicals in the building, and 50 have no such rules. Others try various methods of moral suasion, including in one instance a janitor who directs the unwashed to a lavatory, and in another a fine of a few cents for a second offense.

The sixth question, whether there is an age limit or not, brings various replies. Thirty-six libraries have none, five base it on ability to read or write, one fixes it at 6, one at 7, and one at 8. Ten libraries allow a child a card in his own name at 10, two at 11, forty-seven at 12, six at 13, thirty-three at 14, four at 15, and six at 16. They qualify their statements in many cases by adding that children may use the cards of older persons, or may have them if they bring a written guarantee from their parents or are in certain classes in the public schools.

Question 7 deals with the number of books a week allowed to children. Ninety-five libraries allow them to change a book every day; one (subscription) gives them a dozen a day if they wish. Fifteen limit them to two, and 3 to three a week, and 16 to only one. Several librarians in libraries where children are allowed a book a day express their disapproval of the custom, and one has entered into an engagement with her young readers to take 1 book in every 4 from some other class than fiction. Others do not answer definitely. A few libraries issuing two cards, or two-book cards, allow children the use of two books a week, if one is not a novel or story.

Question 8 is a less important one, whether children's cards are of a different color from others. There is no difference between the cards of adults and children in 124 libraries, except in case of school cards in 2. In 4 the color of cards for home use varies, and 4 report other distinctions, like punches or different charging slips. Eight do not charge on cards and 12 do not answer.

With regard to question 9, "What authors are most read by children who take books from your library?" the lists vary so much in length that it is impossible to give a fair idea of them in in few sentences. Some libraries mention only two or three authors, others ten times as many. Miss Alcott's name is in more lists than any other. Where only two or three authors are given, they are usually of the Alger, Castlemon, Finley, Optic grade. These four do not appear in the reports from 35 libraries, where Alden, Ballantyne, Mrs. Burnett, Susan Coolidge, Ellis, Henty, Kellogg, Lucy Lillie, Munroe, Otis, Stoddard, and various fairy tales fill their places. Seven are allowing Alger, Castlemon, Finley, and Optic to wear out without being replaced, and soon find that books of a higher type are just as interesting to young readers.

Question 10 asks what methods are used in directing children's reading, and if a special assistant is at their service, or if they are encouraged to consult the librarian and all the assistants. Many librarians overconscientiously say, "No methods," but at the same time acknowledge the personal supervision and friendly interest that were meant in the query. Only nine do not report something of this kind. Six have, or are about to have, a special assistant, or have already opened a bureau of information. Five say that they pay special attention to selecting the best books, 4 of the larger libraries have open shelves, and 2 are careful in the choice and supervision of assistants.

In answer to question 11, 5 report special reading rooms, present or prospective, for children; 3 more wish that they had them, while others believe that the use of a room in common with older readers teaches them to be courteous and considerate to others. Most reading rooms are open to children, who sometimes have a table of their own, but in a few cases those under are excluded.

My own opinion on the subjects treated in the questions are:

1. It is easier for a librarian or assistant to find a book for a child if whatever is adapted to his intelligence on a certain subject is kept by itself, and not with other books which may be dry, out of date, or written for a trained student of mature mind.

2. It is easier to help a child work up a subject if the books which he can use are divided into classes, not all alphabeted under authors.

3. A separate card catalog for children often relieves a crowd at the other cases. A printed dictionary catalog without notes does not help a child.

A public library can make no better investment than in printing a classified list for children, with short notes on stories illustrating history or life in different countries, and references to interesting books written for older readers. Such a list should be sold for 5 cents, much less than cost.

4. The money spent in paying for the paper and time used in covering books is just as well employed in binding, and the attractive covers are pleasant to look at.

5. The books can be kept reasonably clean if children are made to understand that they must not be taken away, returned, or if possible, read with unwashed hands. City children soon begin to understand this if they are spoken to pleasantly and sent away without a book till they come back in a fit state to handle it.

6. As soon as a child can read and write he should be allowed to use books. A proper guarantee from parent or teacher should, of course, be required.

7. A child in school cannot read more than one story book a week without neglecting his work. If he needs another book in connection with his studies he should take it on a school teacher's, or nonfiction card.

8. It is best, if a child has only one book a week, for his card to be of a different color from others, that it may be more easily distinguished at the charging desk.

9. It has been proved by actual experiment that children will read books which are good in a literary sense if they are interesting. New libraries have the advantage over old ones, that they are not obliged to struggle against a demand for the boys' series that were supplied in large quantities fifteen or twenty years ago.

10. As soon as children learn that in a library there are books and people to help them on any subject, from the care of a sick rabbit to a costume for the Landing of the Pilgrims, they begin to ask advice about their reading. It is a good thing if some of the library assistants are elder sisters in large families who have tumbled about among books, and if some of the questions asked of applicants for library positions relate to what they would give boys or girls to read. If an assistant in a large library shows a special fitness for work with children, it is best to give it into her charge. If all the assistants like it, let them have their share of it.

11. The question of a children's reading room depends on the size of the room for older readers, and how much it is used by them in the afternoons. Conditions vary so much in libraries that it is impossible for one to make a rule for another in this case.

HOW LIBRARY WORK WITH CHILDREN HAS GROWN IN HARTFORD AND CONNECTICUT

The Library Journal for February, 1914, says: "One of the pleasantest features of 'Library week' at Lake George in 1913 was the welcome given to Miss Hewins, that typical New England woman, whose sympathy with children and child life has made this relation of her public library work a type and model for all who have to do with children.... Miss Hewins's paper was really a delightful bit of literary autobiography, and she has now happily acceded to a request from the Journal to fill out the outlines into a more complete record."

Not long ago I went into the public library of a university town in England and established confidence by saying, "I see that Chivers does your binding," whereupon the librarian invited me inside the railing. A boy ten or twelve years old was standing in a Napoleonic attitude, with his feet very far apart, before the fiction shelves, where the books were alphabetized under authors, but with apparently nothing to show him whether a story was a problem-novel or a tale for children. My thoughts went back many years to the days when I first became the librarian of a subscription library in Hartford, where novels and children's stories were roughly arranged under the first letter of the title, and not by authors. There was a printed catalog, but without anything to indicate in what series or where in order of the series a story-book belonged, and it was impossible when a child had read one to find out what the next was except from the last page of the book itself or the advertisements in the back and they had often been torn out for convenient reference.

My technical equipment was some volunteer work in a town library, a little experience in buying for a Sunday-school library, and about a year in the Boston Athenaeum. The preparation that I had had for meeting children and young people in the library was, besides some years of teaching, a working knowledge of the books that had been read and re-read in a large family for twenty-five years, from Miss Edgeworth and Jacob Abbott, an old copy of "Aesop's fables," Andersen, Grimm, Hawthorne, "The Arabian nights," Mayne Reid's earlier innocent even if unscientific stories, down through "Tom Brown," "Alice in Wonderland," Our Young Folks, the Riverside Magazine, "Little women," to Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte and Mrs. Gaskell. These books were in the Hartford Young Men's Institute, but they were little read in comparison with the works of the "immortal four," who were then writing series at the rate of two or more volumes a year--Optic, Alger, Castlemon and Martha Finley--and still refuse to be forgotten. The older girls demanded Ouida, a new name to me, but I read some of her novels before I had been in the library many weeks, and remember writing a letter to a daily paper giving an outline of the plot of one of them as a hint to fathers and mothers of what their schoolgirl daughters were reading. I think that there was something about boys, too, in the letter, and a plea for "Ivanhoe" and other books of knightly adventure.

The Young Men's Institute Library in Hartford was a survival from the days of subscription libraries and lecture courses. The city had then a population of about fifty thousand, of whom some five or six hundred were subscribers to the library, paying three dollars for the use of one book at a time or five dollars for two, including admission to the periodical room. Hartford had a large number of Irish inhabitants, some Germans, a few of whom were intelligent and prosperous Jews, a few French Canadians, possibly still fewer Scandinavians. It was several years before the first persecution of the Russian and Polish Jews sent them to this country. In the year when I came, 1875, there were forty-six boys and girls in the high school graduating class, all, from their names and what I know of some of them, apparently of English descent, except one whose name is Scotch.

The class which was graduated last June had about 650 members on entering, and 250 at the end of its course. Among the names are Italian, Hebrew, Swedish, Irish, German, Danish, Spanish, Bohemian, Armenian--the largest percentage from families not of English descent being Hebrew.

It is fair to say that at least half of the boys and girls of the earlier graduating class, or their families, had library subscriptions, but little use of the library was recommended even by the high school teachers, and none by the teachers of the graded schools. How could there be? Five dollars is a large sum in most families, and children at that time had to read what they could get at home or from the Sunday-school libraries, which were no better nor worse than others of the period.

The first effort that I remember making for a better choice of books was showing the library president some volumes by Thomes, a writer for the older boys, whose stories were full of profanity and brutal vulgarity. There was no question about discarding them and some of Mayne Reid's books like "The scalp hunters" and "Lost Lenore," which are much of the same type, very different from his earlier stories, and in a short time we did not renew books by some other authors, but let them die out, replacing them if possible by stories a little better, giving preference to those complete in themselves.

Within a short time, in 1878, we began to publish a quarterly bulletin. In the first number "Library notes" begins: "Much time and thought have been given to suggesting in this bulletin good books for boys and girls. As a rule, they read too much. Our accounts show that one boy has taken 102 story-books in six months, and one girl 112 novels in the same time. One book a week is certainly enough, with school studies. Within the last month one boy has asked us for Jack Harkaway's stories, another for bound volumes of the Police News, and a third for 'The murderer and the fortune teller,' 'The two sisters and the avenger' and 'The model town and the detective.' These are not in the library and will not be. The demand for girls for the New York Weekly novels is not small. We shall gladly cooperate with fathers and mothers in the choice of children's books."

Of what we now call nature-books there were very few written or well illustrated for children, though the library had John Burroughs, Harris's "Insects injurious to vegetation" and Samuels's "Birds of New England and the adjacent states." There was little interest in out-of-door study, and I have never forgotten the contempt on the face of one boy when instead of Mayne Reid's "Boy hunters," which was out, he was offered "The butter- fly hunters," or the scorn with which he repeated the title. All that is changed, thanks to the influence of schools and teachers, and children are no longer ignorant of common birds and insects. St. Nicholas helped in opening their eyes, when a librarian, Harlan H. Ballard, of Pittsfield, organized the Agassiz Association with a monthly report in the magazine. We had a chapter, Hartford B., that met for years out of doors on Saturday mornings through the spring, early summer and autumn, and even through one winter when some specimens of the redheaded woodpecker were on the edge of the city. Usually our winter meetings were in the library, and we often had readings from Burroughs, Thoreau, Frank Buckland and others of the earlier nature-lovers. The children came from families of more than usual intelligence, and some of them who now have well-grown children of their own often refer with pleasure to our walks and talks.

I had taught for three years in a school where the children and I were taken out of doors every week in spring and autumn by an ornithologist and an entomologist. At this time we were beginning to buy more books on out-of-door subjects, and I had learned enough in my teaching to be able to evaluate them in a bulletin.

The years went on, with once in a while an encouraging report about a boy who had made experiments from works on chemistry or beguiled a fortnight's illness with Wordsworth's "Greece," or Guhl and Koner's "Life of the Greeks and Romans," or had gone on from Alger and Optic to Cooper, Lossing, Help's "Life of Columbus" and Barber's "History of New England." Both boys and girls were beginning to apologize for taking poor stories.

In one of our bulletins, January, 1881, is an acknowledgment of Christmas material received from the advance sheets of Poole's Index, then in preparation in the Watkinson Library, on the other side of the building. Imagine life in a library without it, you who have the Readers' Guide and all the debates and Granger's Index to Poetry and the Portrait Index! Nevertheless, we were not entirely without printed aids, for we had the Brooklyn catalog, the Providence bulletins, and the lists of children's books prepared by the Buffalo and Quincy libraries.

In 1882, at the request of Frederick Leypoldt, editor of the Publishers' Weekly, I compiled a list of "Books for the young," some of which are of permanent value. In a second edition, in 1884, I reprinted from our bulletin a list of English and American history for children, between twelve and fifteen, based on my own experience with boys and girls. I can laugh at it now, after years of meeting child-readers, seventy-five per cent of whom have no books at home, and can also find food for mirth in my belief that a list of books recommended for vacation reading in another bulletin would attract most boys and girls under sixteen.

One school, under a wise and far-seeing principal, who is now an authority on United States history and the author of several school books on the subject, had in 1884 an arrangement with us for a supply of historical stories for reading, and we printed a list of these and of other books on American history which would be interesting if read by or to the older pupils in the grammar grades.

Sets of fifty copies each of books for supplementary reading in school were bought by the library in 1894, and apportioned by the school principals at their monthly meetings. Several new sets were bought every year till 1905, when the collection numbered about three thousand, and was outgrowing the space that we could spare for it. The schools then provided a place for the school duplicates, and relieved the library of the care of them. Since 1899 the graded schools have received on request libraries of fifty books to a room, from the third grade to the ninth, to be kept until the summer vacation, when they are returned for repairs and renewal. The number circulated during the school year has grown from 6,384 in 1899-1900 to 17,270 in 1912-13. The children's applications are sent to the main library, and no child may have a card there and in a school branch at the same time.

There were rumors for several years that the library would be made free, and when it was at last announced in 1888 that $250,000 had been given by the late J. Pierpont Morgan, his father and two families related to them, on condition that $150,000 more should be raised by private subscription to remodel the Wadsworth Athenaeum, which then housed three libraries and a picture- gallery, and to provide for its maintenance, the rumor bade fair to come true. That the money came in, is largely due to the personal efforts of Charles Hopkins Clark, editor-in-chief of the Hartford Courant, for many years treasurer of the Athenaeum, the Watkinson Library and the Hartford Public Library, and the sum required was promised in 1890. Later the library offered the free use of its books, and also the income of about $50,000 to the city, on condition of keeping its form of government by a self-perpetuating corporation.

The first step towards the enlarged use of the library was to separate the children's books and classify them. We had had a fixed location up to that time, and I had not yet broken loose from it, but I numbered them according to the best light I had, though in a very short time I saw that with the increased number of duplicates we had to buy, only a movable location was of the least practical use. It was several years before the Dewey classification was finally adopted for the children, although we classified our grown-up books by it before we opened to the public.

When the library became free, in 1892, the annual circulation of children's books rose at once to 50,000, 25 per cent of the whole, and as large as the largest total in the subscription days. We immediately had to buy a large supply of new books, carefully chosen, and printed a too fully annotated list, which we found useful for some years and discarded when we were able to open the shelves. We had only a corner for children's books, almost none for children under ten, and no admission to the shelves. We struggled on as well as we could for the next few years.

A dialogue between a reader and the librarian in 1897 shows what we were trying to do at this time. It is really true, and illustrates the lack of knowledge in one of the most intelligent women in the city of the many points of contact between the library and the boys and girls of the city.

Reader: "There ought to be somebody in the library to tell people, especially children, what to read."

Librarian: "Have you ever seen the children's printed list, with notes on books connected with school work, and others written for older readers but interesting to children, hints on how and what to read, and a letter R against the best books?"

Reader: "No, I never heard of it."

Librarian: "It was ready the day after the library opened, was sold for five cents, and the first edition of a thousand copies was exhausted so soon that a second had to be printed. Have you ever heard of the lists of interesting books in connection with Greek, Roman and English history given to high school pupils' or the records kept for years by the North School children of books which they have read, and sent to the librarian to be commented on and criticised in an hour's friendly talk in the school room, or the letters written on the use of the library by pupils in the other schools?"

Reader: "No."

Librarian: "Have you ever seen the lists of good novels for boys and girls growing away from books written for children and also a list of interesting love-stories for readers who have heard of only a few authors?"

Reader: "No."

Librarian: "Have you ever noticed the printed lists of new books, with notes, hung on the bulletin board every Monday?"

Reader: "No."

Librarian: "Do you know that the library has twelve hundred volumes of the best books by the best authors, fifty of each, for use in the public schools?"

Reader: "No."

The library opened in 1895 a branch for children in the Social Settlement, and in 1897 reading rooms in connection with vacation schools, established by the Civic Club and afterwards taken in charge by the city.

The Educational Club, an organization of parents, teachers and others interested in education, began in 1897 with very informal meetings, suggested by the school section of the Civic Club, which were held in my office for three years, until they outgrew it and needed a more formal organization. The directors of the Civic Club and managers of the Social Settlement have met there for years, and the Connecticut Public Library Committee found it a convenient meeting place until it seemed better to hold sessions in the Capitol, where its office is.

The history classes of the North School, of whose principal I have spoken, used to make a pilgrimage every year to points of interest in the city, ending with an hour in the rooms of the Historical Society in the building, where they impersonated historical characters or looked at colonial furniture and implements. After the hour was over they used to come to the office for gingerbread and lemonade, which strengthened their friendly feeling for the library. This lasted until the principal went to another city.

In 1898, in a talk to some children in one of the schools just before the summer vacation, I asked those who were not going out of town to come to the library one afternoon every week for a book-talk, with a tableful of books such as they would not be likely to find for themselves. The subjects the first year were:

Out-of-door books and stories about animals, Books about Indians, Travellers' tales and stories of adventure, Books that tell how to do things, Books about pictures and music, A great author and his friends (Sir Walter Scott), Another great author and his short stories (Washington Irving), Old-fashioned books for boys and girls. The talks have been kept up ever since.

The series in 1900 was on Books about knights and tournaments, what happened to a man who read too much about knights (Don Quixote), Books about horses, Two dream-stories, (The divine comedy and The pilgrim's progress), Some funny adventures (A traveller's true tale and others), Some new books, How a book is made, Stories about India, Pictures and scrap-books.

The next year, 1901, the talks were about stories connected with English history, the Old-English, the Normans, the Plantagenet times, King Henry V., the Wars of the Roses, King Henry VII, and King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots, the Stuarts, and the English Revolution and eighteenth- century England.

The year after, 1902, the talks were on "Books that you have not read," under the titles Sea stories, Indian stories, Horse stories, Wonder stories, Hero stories, African stories, South Sea stories, School and college stories, Old stories. A table of books was in the room, and I took them up one by one and told a little about the story, sometimes reading aloud and stopping at a very interesting point.

In 1903, the subjects were Stories about dragons, Stories about soldiers, Stories about shipwrecks, Stories about out-of- doors, Stories of real people told by themselves, Stories about adventures, Stories about pictures, Stories about the West, the object being to give the children of the upper grammar grades a glimpse into interesting books of which they might otherwise never hear. In that year we printed a list of novels for young readers that is now ten years old and needs revision, but still has its uses.

The use of the reference-room by children steadily increased, until the need of a room for them became evident, both on weekdays and Sundays. The Bulletin for March 1, 1900, says: "On Sunday, Feb. 25, there were eighty-one children in the small room, filling not only chairs too high for their short legs, but benches extending into the circulation room. They were all quiet and orderly, and some of them read seriously and absorbedly for several hours on 'The twentieth century,' 'The boundaries of the United States,' and 'The comparative greatness of Napoleon and Alexander.' The younger children read storybooks in the same quiet manner. A children's room would relieve the pressure on all three departments of the library." The "last straw" that led to the grant of rooms was a newspaper article illustrated by a photograph of the reference-room on a Sunday afternoon with one man, one woman and fifty-one children in it.

In 1904, the library came into possession of two large, bright sunny rooms and a smaller one adjoining in an old-fashioned house next door, which belonged to the Athenaeum and had been released by the removal of the Hartford Club to a large new house across the street. We opened rooms in November, just before Thanksgiving, and from then till New Year's Day we received gifts from many friends: a pair of andirons for the open fireplace, several pictures, a check "for unnecessary things" from one of the women's clubs, another for wall-decoration from teachers, students and graduates of the Albany Library School, fifty Japanese color-prints of chrysanthemums from the Pratt Institute children's room, a cuckoo clock that is still going, though it demands a vacation about once a year, and a Boston fern that is now in flourishing condition. A large Braun photograph of the Madonna del Granduca came later from the Pittsburgh School for Children's Librarians.

The furniture is of the simplest kind. We used some tables that we had, and bought one new one, some bentwood chairs for the older children and others such as are used in kindergartens for the younger. Pratt Institute lent us that first winter the very attractive illustrations by the Misses Whitney for Louisa Alcott's "Candy country." Some friends who were breaking up housekeeping gave the room a case of native and foreign stuffed birds with the hope that they might be as great a source of pleasure to the children as they had been to them in their childhood. Another friend sent us two trunks of curiosities from Europe, Asia, Africa and North America, which are shown a few at a time.

The next summer, 1905, the book-talks were about pictures in the room, most of which had been bought with our friends' gifts. Windsor Castle, Kenilworth, Heidelberg Castle, The Alhambra, St. George, King Arthur, Sir Walter Scott, the Canterbury Pilgrims, some Shakespeare stories. On the Alhambra afternoon, a girl who had spent her first year out of college in Spain described the palace and showed curiosities from Granada. One day a Civil War nurse who happened in was persuaded to tell the boys and girls in the room about the three weeks she spent in the White House, taking care of Tad Lincoln through a fever. Some years later we were fortunate enough to hear her again in the room above, on Abraham Lincoln's hundredth birthday, when she held the attention of a large number of boys and girls for more than an hour.

The next summer "What you can get out of a Henty book" was used as an excuse for showing books and pictures about the Crusades, Venice, the knights of Malta, the Rebellion of the Forty-five, the East India Company, the siege of Gibraltar, the Peninsula war, and modern Italy.

That summer we had a puzzle-club to show younger children how to work the puzzles in St. Nicholas and other magazines and newspapers. We held our first Christmas exhibition that year, 1906, in the room itself, for one day only, before the hour of opening.

After an exhibition of lace in the Athenaeum the next spring, the specialist who arranged it held the attention of her audience of girls between ten and fourteen, giving a practical illustration of the making of pillow-lace, showing specimens of different kinds, pointing out the use of lace in old-fashioned costumes for children, and exhibiting a piece of Valenciennes which had been stolen by a catbird and recovered before it was woven into a nest. This talk was given at my request, because we could find almost nothing on lace in books for children, and the exhibit was then attracting much notice.

That year our first children's librarian, who had given only a part of her working hours to the room, the rest to the loan- desk, left us to be married. The school work had grown so fast that it had become necessary for us to find a successor who was equal to it, and whose sole time could be given to that and the care of the room, which is open only from 3.30 to 6 on school- days, except on Wednesdays, Saturdays and in vacations, when we have all-day hours. The children in vacation-time may change story-books every day if they like--practically none of them do it--but in school time they are allowed only one a week. This is not a hardship, for they may use their non-fiction cards, which give them anything else, including bound magazines.

Our children's librarian makes up for lack of library technique by her acquaintance with teachers, and experience in day, evening and vacation schools, that have brought her into contact with children of all sorts and conditions.

The summer before her coming I had charge of the room for a part of every day, and observing that children under fourteen were beginning to think that they had read everything in the room and were asking to be transferred, I made a collection of books, principally novels, from the main library, marked them and the bookcards with a red star, and placed them on side shelves, where the younger children soon learned that they would find nothing to interest them. This keeps the older boys and girls in the room until they are ready for the main library, and when they are transferred they are sent to me in my office, where they are told that some one is always ready to give them help if they ask for it. The list of books for the first year after coming into the library is handed to them, and they are also referred to the high school shelves, to be mentioned later.

We insist on a father or mother coming with a child and leaving a signature or mark on the back of the application-card. This is placing responsibility where it belongs, and as we always have at least one of the staff who can speak Yiddish, and others who speak Italian, the parents are usually willing to come.