process; the finishing proof. On the bulletin boards are constantly displayed pictures taken. from magazines on special topics-anniversary days, great events, birthdays of famous men, also pictures bearing upon special studies given by the teachers in the public schools. The room is made attractive with flowers, growing plants, pictures, and books. A room is especially provided for the tiniest children with games and scrap-books, and miniature chairs and tables seem adapted to the little ones. This same idea is being carried out in smaller new libraries, that of Providence in particular.

The two old libraries of Denver have recently been consolidated, and they have been in their new building but a few months. The accompanying picture is of their new children's room. It has wall shelving for 4,000 volumes. Their aim is to come in contact with the children and to direct their reading without their knowing it, having always in mind the adage of the twig. The average cir culation of the room is 300 books a day.

One notable feature about all these libraries is the liberty given children and the freedom from abuse of that privilege.

A series of questions was sent to the boys and girls who frequented one library. They were pleased to be

consulted, and the answers were naïve and respectful.

Boys seemed to prefer history and books of travel, while girls grew enthusiastic over fairy stories and poetry. Strange as it may seem, the tastes of the boys were more wholesome than those of the girls. "The Swiss Family Robinson," "John Halifax," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," all seemed favorites.

One of the most interesting children's rooms is in the Wylie Avenue Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburg. It has a constituency which consists for the most part of colored children and children of foreign parentage. The chances for work with these children are almost unlimited. The children are of all ages, from babies who look at picture-books to boys and girls of fourteen to fifteen years of age. In the Carnegie Library they have introduced kindergarten principles into the home library work by appointing a supervising visitor, a kindergartner who has had years of experience in the free kindergarten and summer playgrounds of Pittsburg.

Nor is this laudable work for the little ones entirely confined to the large libraries. All over

the country work in this direction is being agi

tated. Michigan City, Ind. had recently an Indian Day at the public library. A screen in the children's room was covered with Indian pictures in black and white. On the blackboard was written in bright chalk a list of new Indian books, and in a case and on tables were placed the Indian books in the library for the inspection of the children.

At Champaign, Ill., the library is so fortunate as to have a series of story hours for the children, conducted every week by a member of the library school of that place.

It is the opinion of the people of Evanston, Ill., that much has been done by the establishment of a

So

children's corner. Finding they could not devote a room, they set aside a corner of the general reading-room for the children, and the good results outweigh any matter of inconvenience. successful have they been that the attendants feel it is certainly worth while, even at the risk of crowding, to have a children's corner if a separate room cannot be provided.

ner.

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, also has a children's corAn innovation is the children's club, divided into chapters, which the children join according to age. The Eugene Field Chapter is for the little ones from six to eight years of age, and the Lowell Chapter for those from fourteen to sixteen.

A unique exhibition was given a short time ago at Bloomington, Ill. They had a dog show in the city, in which the children were of course much interested. Desiring a similar attraction at the li. brary, they secured from the manager of the show some of his colored posters, and with a list of books attached they made a sensation among the boys.

Jamestown, N. Y., Ev. erett, Mass., and Dayton, Ohio, each have children's libraries, and Circleville, Ohio, provides the Ohio pupils' reading course, which was introduced into their schools, as well as the best books in the juvenile line.

Cambridge, Mass., has a room with an outside entrance. so that the chil

dren do not disturb people in the other parts of the library.

An interesting method of librarian's, work among children originated with Mr. Charles W. Birtwell, secretary of the Boston Children's Aid Society. "I had been connected with the Children's Aid Society but a short time," says Mr. Birtwell, when many avenues of work opened up before me, and it was quite perplexing to see how to make my relations to the various children I became acquainted with real and vital. Among other things, the children ought to have the benefit of good reading and become lovers of good books. . . . A little bookcase was designed. It was made of white wood, stained cherry, with a glass door and Yale lock. It contained a shelf for fifteen books, and above that another for juvenile periodicals. The whole thing, carefully designed and neatly made, was simple yet pleasing to the eye. I asked my little friends Rosa at the North End, Barbara over in South Boston, and Giovanni at the South End if they would like little libraries in their homes, of which they should be the librarians and from which their playmates or workmates might draw books, the supply to be replenished from time to time. They welcomed the idea heartily, and with me set about choosing the boys and girls of their respective neighborhoods who were to form the library group.

Thus originated what is known as the home library system. Twenty-five dollars purchases

a small bookcase of white wood, stained cherry, with glass doors and a lock, and covers the price of seventeen books and a year's subscription to St. Nicholas, Youth's Companion, and a child's newspaper. This scheme has been tested in some libraries, and it is to be regretted that it has not been universally adopted. The Carnegie Library has twenty of these small libraries in circulation, and Brooklyn and Chicago report good results along this line.

In its work with schools the "special library system" is sometimes used. In some towns it is the custom for whole classes to visit the library and in company with the teacher examine books which treat of the subjects being studied. This is often done in the children's room.

A glance at the happy faces in the children's room is all that is needed to show that such a place is a step in the right direction. People are gradually beginning to realize this-and to provide a proper room for the young. The librarian must be a person of tact and with a love for children. The very fact that the child-voluntarily opens his heart demands sympathy and discrimination. It is a delicate position, and one requiring a ready knowledge of child nature.

The library that does not recognize this work as one of the developments of the future will soon find itself behind the times. The Pratt Institute acknowledges this when it gives in the curriculum for a librarian's second year of study "visits to children's libraries."

THE

HE foregoing article describes the work now carried on in many American public libraries, with a view to encouraging and guiding the reading of children. The methods described by Miss Smith have been adopted, to a greater or less extent, by the public library administration. of nearly every one of our larger cities, and of more than one of the smaller towns and villages. In most instances the initiative has been taken by the libraries; but the factor of active coöperation between the public library and the public school has been an important element in much of this work. For nearly twenty years, Mr. Samuel S. Green, librarian of the Free Public Library at Worcester, Mass., has been an untiring advocate of such cooperation; and in other cities, east and west, the intelligent effort of school superintendents, principals, and teachers to direct the reading of the children under their care has not been lacking. So important has this question become, in the discussions of educators, that a special committee to report on the relations of public libraries to public schools was appointed at the meeting of the National Educational Association held in Washington in 1898. The full report of this committee has recently been published,* and its suggestions are worthy of the closest attention from all officers of schools and libraries, as well as from others concerned in any way with the administration of these important educational agencies.

From that portion of the report which deals with the special function of the school in introducing children to the proper use of books, prepared by Mr. Charles A. McMurry, we gather that a great advance has recently been made in the matter of intelligent discrimination as to suitable reading for young children. Mr. McMurry says:

To teach children how to read so that they could make use of books, newspapers, etc., was once looked upon as a chief object of school-work. We now go far beyond this, and ask that teachers lead the children into the fields of choice reading matter, and cultivate in them such a taste and appreciation for a considerable number of the best books ever written that all their lives will be enriched by what they read. This is one of the grand but simple ideals of the schoclroom, and - Copies of this report, at 15 cents each, may be procured from the secretary of the association, Prof. Irwin Shepard, Winona, Minn.

room.

lends great dignity to every teacher's work in the common schools. The most solid and satisfactory reasons can be given why this should be done in every schoolThese substantial materials of culture belong to every child without exception. They are an indispensable part of that general cultivation which is the birthright of every boy and girl. The child that by the age of fourteen has not read "Robinson Crusoe," "Hiawatha," "Pilgrim's Progress," "The Stories of Greek Heroes," by Kingsley and Hawthorne, "The Lays of Ancient Rome," "Paul Revere's Ride," "Gulliver's Travels," "The Arabian Nights," "Sleepy Hollow," "Rip Van Winkle," "The Tales of the White Hills," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather, "Marmion," and "Lady of the Lake," the story of Ulysses and the Trojan War, of Siegfried, William Tell, Alfred, and John Smith, of Columbus, Washington, and Lincoln-the boy or girl who has grown up to the age of fourteen without a chance to read and thoroughly enjoy these books has been robbed of a great fundamental right; a right which can never be made good by any subsequent privileges or grants. It is not a question of learning how to read-all children who go to school learn that; it is the vastly greater question of appreciating and enjoying the best things which are worth reading.

TRAVELING LIBRARIES.

An application of the traveling-library system, in connection with the public schools, has been successfully operated in several cities. In Milwaukee, for example, library-cards are issued to pupils of the public schools by the teachers, under the general supervision of the librarian and his assistants. Teachers go to the library and select enough books for their pupils, lists of books for young people and for special purposes having been published by the library. The books thus selected are placed in boxes and sent by the library to the school. They are changed after eight weeks. In the year 1897 twentythree thousand books were thus issued nearly ninety thousand times.

The Public Library of St. Louis has one hundred and twenty-five sets of books, carefully selected with a view to the needs of the first four grades of the public schools, each set consisting of thirty copies of an attractive book, so that all the children in the class may be reading the book at the same time; thus adding to the interest of it, and enabling the teacher to conduct class exercises. The librarian, Mr. Frederick M. Crunden, to whom we are indebted

for these facts, states that this work would have been quintupled if the library had possessed the means.

Thus far we have been unable to supply even the first four grades, while we have done very little work in the higher grades. This has reversed the usual order, but I believe that the sooner you begin in attempts to give children a love for reading the better. In the public schools it is all the more essential to reach the lowest grades first, because so many children leave without going beyond the fourth or fifth grade. Moreover, it is easier to inculcate a love for reading in young children than it is in older ones; and the supplementary reading more directly aids the regular school-work in lower grades. Indeed, since the chief thing taught in the earlier grades is reading, the more practice they get the more rapid will be their progress. The way to learn to read is to read; and if reading is made interesting, by giving children attractive books, the teacher will be relieved of all further care. In the school in this city where the greatest amount of this reading is done, the principal tells me that they do not have to give any thought to discipline; that the school

takes care of itself; that the children are so interested in their work and their books that they are perfectly orderly. He tells me, also, that they let the children do all the reading of books in school that they may want to do.

This striking success reported from the St. Louis schools has been essentially duplicated in two Philadelphia schools which have recently had the use of traveling libraries supplied by the efficient free-library system of that city. This has led the Public Ledger, in its issue of April 5, to advocate the general adoption of the plan by the city-school system.

Experience seems to have shown that the prac tical coöperation of the library and the school not only adds greatly to the direct value of the former as an educational agency, -the only function of the free library that justifies its maintenance by taxation, but at the same time it actually increases the efficiency of the school itself. The librarian makes the teacher's task easier.

IT seems rather strange, when one considers the broad scope of American philanthropy, which includes the founding of libraries, museums, and art galleries, the care of the poor, the sick, and the fallen, the endowment of institutions to meet every conceivable need, the millions spent annually on ineffectual attempts to save the souls of the heathen,-that it has almost wholly ignored a most promising field of operation. It has failed to respond to the urgent needs of healthy, able-bodied youth in rural districts. It has overlooked the undeveloped and unused labor of young men and women who, for lack of steady and remunerative employment, leave their homes and add to the increasing throngs that seek the large cities, thereby rendering the problems of overpopulation and the unemployed more and more complicated.

Without this increase the situation is difficult enough, for there ever arises the seemingly unanswerable question, Where shall those already living in cities find employment? Where, for example, shall the trained art student, the designer, and the artist-artisan find a suitable and profitable market for their talents? Few openings for them are to be found in the great cities, and fewer still in the smaller towns; yet what is

to be done with the energies of multitudes having talent, skill, and training who are graduated yearly from the various schools of design?

An answer to this lies in the rural districts. Once emancipated from the idea that he is dependent upon the city manufacturer and upon satisfying the capricious taste of the general public as reflected through the manufacturer, the prospect of the art-worker is infinitely enlarged. He sees that he may become a manufacturer himself, and may mold public taste and not servilely follow it. The true art student represents a certain bent of original talent, and it is for him to ascertain what his gift is. Presuming that it lies in the direction of furniture, he may find in almost any country community in America men who, under careful supervision, could be trained to do fine cabinet-work, who could again produce the beautiful hand-made furniture of colonial and later periods. Such work is well-nigh impossible in cities, where living is high and work is crowded and slighted because of fierce competition; but in country districts where the laborer owns his home and raises his fruit and vegetables on his own bit of land he can afford to put honest, painstaking handwork into a table, a chair, or a chest of drawers. For lack of in