nd where the book was
published, the number of pages, and whether it contains plates or maps;
but not a word of the size or style of type in which it is printed. Yet on
this depends the ability of the reader to use the book for the purpose for
which it was intended. The old-fashioned reader was a mild-mannered
gentleman. If he could not read his book because it was printed in
outrageously small type, he laid it aside with a sigh, or used a
magnifying lens, or persisted in his attempts with the naked eye until
eyestrain, with its attendant maladies, was the result. Lately however,
the libraries have been waking up, and their readers with them. The
utilitarian side of the work is pushed to the front; and the reader is by
no means disposed to accept what may be offered him, either in the content
of the book or its physical make-up. The modern library must adapt itself
to its users, and among other improvements must come an attempt to go as
far as possible in making books physiologically readable.

Unfortunately the library cannot control the output of books, and must
limit itself to selection. An experiment in such selection is now in
progress in the St. Louis Public Library. The visitor to that library will
find in its Open Shelf Room a section of shelving marked with the words
"Books in large type." To this section are directed all readers who have
found it difficult or painful to read the ordinary printed page but who do
not desire to wear magnifying lenses. It has not been easy to fill these
shelves, for books in large type are few, and hard to secure, despite the
fact that artists, printers, and oculists have for years been discussing
the proper size, form, and grouping of printed letters from their various
standpoints. Perhaps it is time to urge a new view--that of the public
librarian, anxious to please his clients and to present literature to them
in that physical form which is most easily assimilable and least harmful.

Tired eyes belong, for the most part, to those who have worked them
hardest; that is, to readers who have entered upon middle age or have
already passed through it. At this age we become conscious that the eye is
a delicate instrument--a fact which, however familiar to us in theory, has
previously been regarded with aloofness. Now it comes home to us. The
length of a sitting, the quality, quantity, and incidence of the light,
and above all, the arrangement of the printed page, become matters of
vit