it does seem to me it is some comfort (if one has
to have a librarian in a library) to have one that goes with the
books--same colour, tone, feeling, spirit, and everything--the kind of
librarian that slips in and out among books without being noticed there,
one way or the other, like the overtone in a symphony.

III

et al.

But the trouble with our library is not merely the new librarian, who
permeates, penetrates, and ramifies the whole library within and
without, percolating efficiency into its farthest and loneliest alcoves.
Our new librarian has a corps of assistants. And even if you manage, by
slipping around a little, to get over to where a book is, alone, and get
settled down with it, there is always some one who is, has been, or will
be looking over your shoulder.

I dare say it's a defect of temperament--this having one's shoulder
looked over in libraries. Other people do not seem to be troubled much,
and I suppose I ought to admit, while I am about it, that having one's
shoulder looked over in a library does not in the least depend upon any
one's actually looking over it. That is merely a matter of form. It is a
little hard to express it. What one feels--at least in our library--is
that one is in a kind of side-looking place. One feels a kind of
literary detective system going silently on in and out all around one, a
polite, absent-minded-looking watchfulness.

Now I am not for one moment flattering myself that I can make my
fault-finding with our librarian's assistants amount to much--fill out a
blank with it.

No one can feel more strongly than I do my failure to put my finger on
the letter of our librarian's faults. I cannot even tell the difference
between the faults and the virtues of our librarian's assistants. Either
by doing the right thing with the wrong spirit, or the wrong thing with
the right spirit they do their faults and virtues all up together. Their
indefatigable unobtrusiveness, their kindly, faithful service I both
dread and appreciate. I have tried my utmost to notice and emphasise
every day the pleasant things about them, but I always get tangled up. I
have started out to think with approval, for instance, of the hush,--the
hush that clothes them as a garment,--but it has all ended in my merely
wondering where they got it and what they thought they were doing with
it. One would think that a hush--a hush of almost any kind--could hardly
help--but I have said enough. I do not want