It will have been gathered from what has gone before, in recapitulation of the duties and responsibilities of the librarian's calling, that it is one demanding a high order of talent. The business of successfully conducting a public library is complex and difficult. It is full of never-ending detail, and the work accomplished does not show for what it is really worth, except in the eyes of the more thoughtful and discerning observers. I may here bring into view some of the drawbacks and discouragements incident to the librarian's vocation, together with an outline of the advantages which belong to it. In the first place, there is little money in it. No one who looks upon the acquisition of money as one of the chief aims of life, should think for a moment of entering on a librarian's career. The prizes in the profession are few--so few indeed, as to be quite out of the question for most aspirants. The salaries paid in subordinate positions are very low in most libraries, and even those of head-librarians are not such that one can lay up money on them. A lady assistant librarian in one city said she had found that one of a librarian's proper qualifications was to be able to live on two meals a day. This doubtless was a humorous exaggeration, but it is true that the average salaries hitherto paid in our public libraries, with few exceptions, do not quite come up to those of public school teachers, taking the various grades into account. Most of the newly formed libraries are poor, and have to be economical. But there is some reason to hope that as libraries multiply and their unspeakable advantages become more fully appreciated, the standard of compensation for all skilled librarians will rise. I say skilled, because training and experience are the leading elements which command the better salaries, in this, as in other professions. Another drawback to be recognized in the librarian's calling, is that there are peculiar trials and vexations connected with it. There are almost no limits to the demands made upon the knowledge and the time of the librarian. In other professions, teaching for example, there are prescribed and well-defined routines of the instruction to be given, and the teacher who thoroughly masters this course, and brings the pupils through it creditably, has nothing to do beyond. The librarian, on the other hand, must be, as it were, a teacher of all sciences and literatures at once. The field to be covered by the wants of readers, and the inquiries that he is expected to answer, are literally illimitable. He cannot rest satisfied with what he has already learned, however expert or learned he may have become; but he must keep on learning forevermore. The new books that are continually flooding him, the new sciences or new developments of old ones that arise, must be so far assimilated that he can give some account of the scope of all of them to inquiring readers.