His children unconsciously absorb this same attitude. They resent control and are hard to keep in order. Much of the librarians’ time must be given to smoothing down ruffled feathers and maintaining discipline--time which ought to be given to bettering the quality of service. Evidently these two kinds of communities must be handled differently. They call for different training on the part of the staff--a different stock of books--almost for different buildings. Then there is the indifferent community, which may be anywhere in the social scale and which requires special handling. It is even difficult to tell at times whether or not a community is really indifferent. Their reaction to the library is often a phase of the local feeling that is the subject of this lecture. It is present in some communities and absent in others, but its presence does not always mean real appreciation of library privileges, nor does its absence mean lack of such appreciation. Not more than a few months apart, about ten years ago, two branch libraries were opened in New York. One was in Greenwich Village, a district of strong local peculiarities, which I fear it is about to lose because writers have taken to describing them in the magazines. The other was on 96th street, which was a part of New York like any other. The “Village” took the greatest interest in the library from the moment when its site was selected. The building was watched from its foundation up. Bad little boys annoyed the workmen. Local politicians and merchants congratulated the neighborhood and told us how fine they thought it was all going to be. Everybody wanted to take part in the opening exercises and nearly everybody did. There were floods of oratory and crowds of visitors. But having obtained the library and done what it considered its whole duty in the premises, Greenwich Village, not being a community of readers, proceeded to leave us to our own devices and it was only after months of up-hill work that the Branch succeeded in getting anything like a respectable circulation.