The blessings rather than the limitations of the small library are portrayed and the "possibility of personal, individual, first-hand contact with the children" is emphasized in this paper presented by Miss Clara W. Hunt at the Niagara Conference of the A. L. A. in 1903. A sketch of Miss Hunt appears on page 135. As the young theological student is prone to look upon his first country parish as a place to test his powers and to serve as a stepping-stone to a large city church, so the librarian of the country town who, visiting a great city library and seeing books received in lavish quantities which she must buy as sparingly as she buys tickets for expensive journeys out of her slender income, a beautifully furnished, conveniently equipped apartment especially for the children, for the student, for the magazine reader, evidences everywhere of money to spend not only for the necessities but also for the luxuries of library life--so it is quite natural for such a visitor to heave a deep sigh as she returns to her library home and contrasts her opportunities, or limitations as she would call them, with those of the worker in a numerically larger field; and quite natural is it for her to long for a change which she feels would mean a broadening and enlarging of outlook and opportunity. It is encouraging sometimes to look at our possessions through other people's spectacles, and perhaps I may help some worker in a small field to see in what she calls her limitations, not a hedging in but an opening, by drawing the contrast from another point of view--from that of one who is regretfully forced to give up almost all personal, individual work with the children and delegate to others that most delightful of tasks, because her library is so large and she has so much money to spend that her services are more needed in other directions. With a keen appreciation of the privilege it is to have charge of a small library, I am going to enumerate some of my reasons for having this feeling. I should explain, in this connection, that my thoughts have centered about the small town library, the library whose citizen supporters do not yet aggregate a population large enough to admit to dignifying their place of residence with the name of a city, a place, therefore, where the librarian may really be able to know every citizen of prominence, every school principal and teacher, the officers of the women's clubs, many of the mothers of the children she hopes to reach, and a very large number of the children themselves. What are the attractions in a spot like this, the compensations which make up even for the lack of a large amount of money to spend? Let me begin first with the less apparent advantages, the "blessings in disguise," I should call them.