The Library Board has been generous in granting our request for more and more books. Our supply, however, is still far too small for the demand made upon it, our circulation having increased from 17,838 to 55,088 for the present year. We have two library stations and 35 class room collections, all demanding more books. When we look back now at the time of our beginning we see that our fears were unfounded. Our people needed only an opportunity and encouragement. The success of the branch has exceeded the hope of the most sanguine of those interested in its organization, and we feel justly proud of the results attained. THE FOREIGN CHILD AT A ST. LOUIS BRANCH Present-day conditions in a branch library in a crowded district of a large city are pictured in the last paper to be included in this compilation, with special emphasis on the necessity of understanding the traditions and customs of foreign peoples in order to know how to appeal to them. It was read by Miss Josephine M. McPike before the meeting of the Missouri Library Association at Joplin, Missouri, in October, 1915. Josephine Mary McPike was born in Alton, Illinois, and studied in Shurtleff College, Upper Alton, and in the University of Illinois. She became a member of the staff of the St. Louis Public Library in 1909. In February, 1917, she resigned from the position of First Assistant at the Crunden Branch to become the librarian of the Seven Corners Branch of the Minneapolis Public Library. Crunden branch is the kind of place, the thought of which makes you glad to get up in the morning. It is an institution a state of mind. And as we workers there feel, so do the people in the neighborhood. We have heard over and over again the almost worn-out appellation "The people's university"; Crunden has a different place in the thoughts of its users. It is really the living-room of our neighborhood--the place where, the dishes having been washed and the apron hung up, we naturally retire to read and to muse. True, it is a large family foregathered in this living-room of ours, much greater in number than the chairs for them to sit upon, but, as in all large families, there is much giving and taking. In the children's room, crowded to overflowing, the Jewish child sits next to the Irish, and the Italian and the Polish child read from the same book. Children of all ages; babes from two and a half years to boys of twenty who spend their days in the factory, and are still reading "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Merry adventures of Robin Hood." There too, sometimes comes the mother but lately arrived from the "Old Country," wearing her brightly colored native costume. Unable to read or to write, she feels more at home here with the children whom she understands, and beams proudly to see her little "Izzey" reading "Child life" or "Summers' reader."