books and learn to admire Washington, Lincoln and other great
men. Without a library many of them will gloat over the exploits of
depraved men and women, and their earliest ambitions will be tainted.

Each town needs a library to furnish more practice in reading for the
little folks in school; it needs it to give the boys and girls who have
learned to read a taste for wholesome literature that informs and
inspires; it needs it as a center for an intellectual and spiritual
activity that shall leaven the whole community and make healthful and
inspiring themes the burden of the common thought--substituting, by
natural methods, clean conversation and literature for petty gossip,
scandal and oral and printed teachings in vice.

F. A. HUTCHINS.

THE LIBRARY AND BOYS

"In Madison, N. J., a bird club of boys met twice a week, once for study
and once for an expedition, and found the library's resources on this
topic to be of interest and value. How to utilize profitably the
activities of a 'gang' of boys is worth much planning. One librarian is
reported to have started a chair-caning class to interest restless boys;
another had a museum of flowers and insects, another conducted a branch
of the flower mission. Not less interesting, and perhaps more
instructive, is a series of talks on Indian legends accompanied by
hunting expeditions for the half-buried implements and relics found in
almost every meadow in some parts of the country. Boys are eager to
learn about natural history and natural science, and they will be
encouraged at the public library."

IRENE VAN KLEECK.

THE LIBRARY

Get good books; give them a home attractive to readers of good books;
name a friend of good books as mistress of this home--and you have a
library; all share in its support and all get pleasure and profit from
it if they will; without divisions religious, politic or social, it
unites all in the pursuit of high pleasure and sound learning, and gives
that common interest in a common concern which is the basis of all local
pride.

If you have rightly read a book, that book is yours.

You cannot always choose your companions; you can always choose your
books. You can, if you will, spend a few minutes every day with the best
and wisest men and women the world has ever known.

The people you have known, the things you have said and done, and the
books you have read, all these are now a part of you.

You like yourself better when you are wit