Sound common sense is as essential to the librarian as sound health. He should always take the practical straightforward view of every item of library business and management, remembering that the straight road is always the shortest way between two points. While he may be full of ideas, he should be neither an idealist nor a dreamer. In library methods, the cardinal requisites to be aimed at, are utility and convenience. A person of the most perfect education, and the highest literary attainments, but destitute of common sense, will not succeed in the conduct of a library. That intuitive judgment, which sees the reason of everything at a glance, and applies the proper agencies to the case in hand, is wanting in his composition. Multitudes of emergencies arise in library service, where the prompt and practical sense of the librarian is required to settle a dispute, adjust a difficulty, or to direct what is to be done in some arrangement or re-arrangement of books, or some library appliance or repair. In such cases, the unpractical or impracticable man will be very likely to decide wrongly, choosing the inconvenient method instead of the convenient, the more costly instead of the more economical, the laborious in place of the obvious and easy; in short, some way of doing the work or settling the difficulty which will not permit it to stay settled, or will require the work to be done over again. The man of common-sense methods, on the other hand, will at once see the end from the beginning, anticipate every difficulty, and decide upon the proper course without trouble or hesitation, finding his judgment fully vindicated by the result. The librarian in whom the quality of common sense is well developed will be ever ready to devise or to accept improvements in library methods. Never a slave to "red tape," he will promptly cut it wherever and whenever it stands in the way of the readiest service of books and information to all comers. Another quality which every librarian or assistant in a library should possess is a thorough love of his work. He should cherish a noble enthusiasm for the success and usefulness of the institution with which he has chosen to be associated. Nor should this spirit be by any means limited to the literary and scientific aid which he is enabled to extend to others, nor to the acquisition of the knowledge requisite to meet the endless inquiries that are made of him. He should take as much interest in restoring a broken binding, or in seeing that a torn leaf is repaired, as in informing a great scholar what the library contains upon any subject.