7. Direct personal intercourse of librarians and assistants with children is the surest way of gaining influence over them. Miss Stevens, of Toledo, has put the secret of the whole matter, so far as we are concerned, into four words: "Librarians should like children." It may be added that a librarian or assistant in charge of circulation should never be too busy to talk with children and find out what they need. Bibliography and learning of all kinds have their places in a library; but the counter where children go needs no abstracted scholar, absorbed in first editions or black-letter, but a winsome friend, to meet them more than halfway, patiently answer their questions, "and by slow degrees subdue them to the useful and the good." READING OF THE YOUNG Miss Hewins made a later report on the same subject [see the previous article] in a paper presented before the World's Library Congress in 1893. In this paper, given below, she has summarized several of the early yearly reports made at the meetings of the A. L. A., all of which are of great interest as a record of the work of various libraries. In the Government report on libraries, 1876, the relation of public libraries and the young was treated by Mr. W. I. Fletcher, who discussed age-restrictions, direction of reading, choice of books, and incidentally the relation of libraries to schools, referring to librarians and trustees as "the trainers of gymnasts who seek to provide that which will be of greatest service to their men." The report was suggestive, and called for several radical changes in the usual management of libraries. No statistics were given, for none had been called for, and the number of libraries which were working in the modern spirit was not large. Mr. Green, in his paper at the Philadelphia conference of 1876 (L. j. 1: 74), gave some suggestions as to how to teach school boys and girls the use of books, and in one or two of the discussions the influence of a librarian on young readers was noticed, but the American Library Association did not give much time to the subject till the Boston conference of 1879, when a whole session was devoted to schools, libraries, and fiction (L. j. 4:319), the general expression of opinion being similar to the formula expressed in the paper by Miss Mary A. Bean, "Lessen the quantity and improve the quality." In 1881, Mr. J. N. Larned, of the Buffalo Young Men's Library, issued his pamphlet, "Books for young readers." The report on "Boys' and girls' reading" which I had the honor of making at the Cincinnati conference of 1882 has answers from some 25 librarians to the question "What are you doing to encourage a love of good reading in boys and girls?" (L. j. 7:182.) Several speak of special catalogs or bulletins, most of personal interest in and friendship with young readers. One writes, "Give a popular boy a good book, and there is not much rest for that book. Librarians should like children." It was in 1883 that, by the suggestion and