The human eye is so constituted that it can see clearly but a small part of the field of vision at one time. We have learned by habit to move it about quickly and comprehensively, so that unless our attention is called to the fact we do not realize this limitation; but it exists. In like manner, it is difficult for the human mind to take a comprehensive view of a subject. We are apt to fix upon some one feature and ignore the rest. In recent times we have been devoting our attention to the personal element. We talk about the “man behind the gun,” a good deal. I would not underrate him or what he can do; but it is surely necessary to have the gun itself before the man behind it can be effective. In fact the man _per se_ is about the most helpless of animals. His superiority to the mere brute lies in his ability to use tools; his inferiority in the fact that he can do almost nothing without them. A man with a gun is indeed formidable; a wildcat can do nothing with such a tool, but then he is reasonably formidable without it. I have yielded thus to the temptation to depreciate the personal element somewhat, at the beginning of an address in which it is to be discussed, because this defect of the human mind, that tends to fix it upon one feature to the exclusion of others, has of late apparently led many to think that a man is valuable in himself and by himself, without anything to work with or anything to work on. A man is making a failure of his job; the first thought is that he must be replaced. Nine persons out of ten fail to inquire whether anyone at all could have succeeded under the same conditions. Your cook prepares an inedible meal; you rage and call loudly for a new regime in the kitchen; whereas all the time your competent servant has been struggling with a faulty range, tough meat and bad flour. Shall we, then, sit down and refuse to do anything at all unless our tools and our materials are of the best? By no means; one of the chief distinctions between a capable and an inefficient worker lies in the ability of the former to make the best of unpromising conditions. No one can do as well with poor tools and materials as with good ones; but the good worker will turn out a better job with the former than the inefficient one will. These things apply of course to the library worker as to all others, especially to librarians in small towns where tools and materials are apt to be not of the best. Among tools we may reckon buildings, books, and all kinds of library appliances. The material is the community on which the librarian by proper use of her tools aims to produce a certain effect. Now it is open to such a worker to view her task from any one of three different standpoints--to choose, we will say, from three different kinds of librarianship. She may be a librarian of the day before yesterday, of yesterday, or of to-day.