Boys like Abraham Lincoln may be relied upon to direct their own reading, but the average child is unable to do this. An important thought which is not always kept in mind by educators is stated thus by Huxley:--"If I am a knave or a fool, teaching me to read and write won't make me less of either one of the other--unless somebody shows me how to put my reading and writing to wise and good purposes." It is not easy to interest in real literature a child whose father reads nothing but newspapers and whose mother derives her intellectual inspiration from novels, but such a child at least lives in a home where there are books, though of an inferior kind, and there is warmth and good lights and leisure to read in quiet and comfort. How different is the case of the poor child, who comes from a tenement where a large family congregate in one room, where the wash is drying, where younger children are playing, there is little light, and no books of any kind. It is with the occupants of such homes that the children's librarian does the most wonderful work. To see a ragged, barefooted child come into a palatial public library, knowing that he has a right to be there and going directly to the shelf choose a book and sit down quietly to enjoy it gives hope for the future of our country. Consider the influence of such a child in his home; he not only interests his brothers and sisters in good books, but also his father and mother. One such child asked a librarian "Will you please start my father on some new fairy tales, he has read all the others." According to the New York Public Library "Reading room books have done more to secure clean hands and orderly ways from persistently dirty and disorderly children than any remedy hitherto tried." There should be enough copies of suitable books and they should be kept on low shelves where the children can have direct access to them. When we spend millions teaching children to read, we should be willing to go to some expense in order to provide them with what is worth reading. It is impossible for those who have not studied the subject to realize the quantity of inane trash with which many children stultify their minds. They read so much that their thought is confused and they cannot even remember the names of the books whose pages are passing before their eyes. The market is flooded with books ranging from the trivial to the harmful which, unless he is properly directed, will divert the child from the real books which he should read and read again. "Ninety children out of one hundred in the public schools below the high school," says Caroline M. Hewins, "read nothing for pleasure beyond stories written in a simple style with no involved sentences. Nine out of the other ten enjoy novels and sometimes poetry and history written for older readers, and can be taught to appreciate other books, but not more than one in a hundred, has a natural love of