d then begin again. It is touching to think of this
great-spirited child, battling year after year against his evil star,
wasting his ingenuity upon devices and makeshifts, his high
intelligence starving for want of the simple appliances of education,
that are now offered gratis to the poorest and most indifferent. He
did a man's work from the time he left school; his strength and
stature were already far beyond those of ordinary men. He wrought his
appointed tasks ungrudgingly, though without enthusiasm; but when his
employer's day was over his own began."

Boys like Abraham Lincoln may be relied upon to direct their own
reading, but the average child is unable to do this. An important
thought which is not always kept in mind by educators is stated thus
by Huxley:--"If I am a knave or a fool, teaching me to read and write
won't make me less of either one of the other--unless somebody shows
me how to put my reading and writing to wise and good purposes." It is
not easy to interest in real literature a child whose father reads
nothing but newspapers and whose mother derives her intellectual
inspiration from novels, but such a child at least lives in a home
where there are books, though of an inferior kind, and there is
warmth and good lights and leisure to read in quiet and comfort. How
different is the case of the poor child, who comes from a tenement
where a large family congregate in one room, where the wash is drying,
where younger children are playing, there is little light, and no
books of any kind. It is with the occupants of such homes that the
children's librarian does the most wonderful work. To see a ragged,
barefooted child come into a palatial public library, knowing that he
has a right to be there and going directly to the shelf choose a book
and sit down quietly to enjoy it gives hope for the future of our
country. Consider the influence of such a child in his home; he not
only interests his brothers and sisters in good books, but also his
father and mother. One such child asked a librarian "Will you please
start my father on some new fairy tales, he has read all the others."
According to the New York Public Library "Reading room books have done
more to secure clean hands and orderly ways from persistently dirty
and disorderly children than any remedy hitherto tried." There should
be enough copies of suitable books and they should be kept on low
shelves where the children can have direct access to them. Wh