We boast that in our country public opinion is all powerful; but we are often apt to regard public opinion as we do the weather. Its balmy gales and its destructive vortices, its gentle dews and its devastating torrents, are alike, we think, beyond our power to regulate. Yet, though public opinion may be unjust or capricious, it is usually level-headed. So the library that covets that good reputation which public opinion alone can give it, must so act as to deserve that good opinion. And as one broken cog will throw a whole machine out of gear, so one assistant who does not realize his or her responsibilities in this matter may mar a library’s reputation, otherwise well-earned. It is hard luck, indeed, that a librarian, who with the majority of his staff has striven long and well to earn the public good-will, should see it forfeited by the thoughtlessness or ill-temper of some one of his staff. This, however, is the way of our world with its multiple connections. None of us may live for himself alone; we stand or fall with others, and the smallest bit of orange peel may bring down the mightiest athlete to the pavement. How may the librarian, or anyone else, bring system to bear on such an evanescent thing as this? It is a hard matter, indeed. But can it be denied that a well-oiled library machine, one that is quickly responsive to direction and control, one whose parts are as perfect in themselves and as perfectly connected as may be, is least likely to suffer from unfortunate accidents? A librarian whose bad judgment--or whose kindness of heart, perhaps--has misled him into admitting into his machine one false cog may find to his sorrow that this will slip at the critical time, betraying both him and the whole engine that he had hoped to wield for good. Here no one kind of system, no particular detail, alone suffices, but every detail, every series, every combination renders the whole fabric of reputation more solid and more secure. I sometimes think that we Anglo-Saxons are in greater need of the inspiration and aid that we get from records of past intellectual achievement than are some other races. For our intellectual heritage does not come at all from our physical ancestry. We are the intellectual heirs of the Greeks, the Romans and the Hebrews, not of our own Teutonic fathers. We can, therefore, not only rely on heredity to maintain our intellectual level; we must continually drink from the same fountains through which our fathers drew inspiration. We sometimes think a little contemptuously of what we call the veneer of modern civilization that the Japanese have put on, forgetting that our own civilization is in great part also acquired, although the acquisition is of earlier date. Moreover, the Japanese have, and retain, intellectual ideals and achievements of their own, having learned from the West hardly more than its mechanics and engineering. On the other hand, our mechanical