we intend to do something with them? It sometimes seems that the foreign reproach that we Americans care only for money, which we are properly disposed to resent, is partly justified by the fact that the only statistics that appear to mean anything to us are financial. When a man learns that he is living beyond his income or that he is getting a smaller per cent for his investments than his neighbor, or that the man at the desk next to him is receiving a larger salary for doing the same work, he does not sit still and say, “Ah! how interesting!” He gets up and does something about it. But statistics that convict him of all sorts of incompetency and foolishness along lines other than monetary ones, he regards simply as objects for intellectual absorption. These percentages, of course, are not the only indications by which a librarian may adjust the proportions of the classes in his collection. If his library has the reserve system, for instance, the call for books in circulation is an unfailing index of the popular demand. If that demand is one that should be heeded, the number of copies in the library may well be proportionate to the number of names on the reserve list. But a librarian who keeps in continual touch with the public by contact with users at the desk needs none of these somewhat mechanical indications. It is the inestimable privilege of the librarian of a small library in a small community to know her public, its wants, its needs, its abilities and its limitations in a way that is denied to custodians of huge collections. In closing, let me suggest the following “Don’ts” for selectors of library books: (1) Don’t buy books that are intellectually far above your readers, in the hope of improving their minds; a man may walk up stairs, but he can’t jump from the sidewalk to the roof. (2) Don’t buy fine editions of books that need rather to be extensively duplicated; better two good souls than one fine body. (3) Don’t buy McGrath and McCutcheon when you have reserves on file for Dickens and George Eliot. (4) Don’t buy biography in excess because you are fond of it yourself, when a comparison of percentages shows that your supply of travel or applied science is not up to the demand. (5) Don’t buy books in flimsy bindings that will give out after the first issue; work should not be done in gauzy garments. (6) Don’t buy books in very strong bindings when their use is to be light and small; overalls are not suitable for an afternoon tea. (7) Don’t buy “sets” and “libraries;” they are adulterated literature, coffee mixed with chicory. (8) Don’t buy subscription books of an agent at a personal interview; it is the agent’s game not to let you think; stand up for your rights and think it over. (9) Don’t estimate public demand by its effect on your own patience; one persistent old gentleman often bulks larger than a crowd of quiet but deserving persons without either push or pull.