functions shows that it has been doing likewise. It has gone further than either of the others, probably, because it finds itself in many ways better equipped for the doing of civic odd jobs. It is related of a railway manager that an employee whose work was over once asked him for a free ticket home. The manager refused, saying: “If you had been working for a farmer you would hardly expect him to hitch up and drive you home, would you?” “No”, said the man, “but if he had a rig already hitched up and ready to start, and he was going my way, I should call him darned mean if he didn’t take me along.” In many cases the library has been hitched up and standing at the door when the necessity has arisen, and it has been “going the same way”--in other words, the need of the community is nearly related to the work that the community’s support has already enabled it to do. Under these circumstances it is in the position of Coleridge’s Wedding Guest--it “can not chuse but hear”. When we look at the library’s recent history, we shall see that it is in precisely this way that it has taken on all its additional functions. The old libraries lent no books. But home use of books seemed presently desirable. After experimenting with separate institutions for this kind of service, we have all come around to considering it a legitimate function of the Public Library. Libraries gave no attention to children. When this became necessary, another function was added. These and other duties were very closely related to the library’s older functions. Soon there was a further step, in making which the library took over services whose connection with its primary business was not so clear. To draw an example from what is most familiar to me at present, in the St. Louis Public Library you will find a room for art exhibits, collections of post-cards and textile fabrics, a card index to current lectures, exhibitions and concerts, a public writing-room with free note-paper and envelopes, a class of young women, studying, like yourselves, to be librarians; meeting-places for all sorts of clubs and groups, civic, educational, social, political and religious; a photographic copying machine, placed at public disposal at the cost of operation; lunch-rooms and rest-rooms for the staff; a garage, with automobiles in it, not to speak of an extensive telephone switchboard, a paint-shop, a carpenter shop, and a power-plant. Not one of these things, I believe, would you have found in a large library fifty years ago, and yet they are probably all, in one shape or another, to be found in all large modern American libraries. They are extensions of function; in many cases it would be hard to justify them on general principles. Why should a library allow young people to dance, or men to hold a political meeting or the neighbors to exhibit local products, in its building? Our English friends hold that it is the height of absurdity to do so. Doubtless we