Children who are forced to forage for themselves from a very early age, as most of our youngsters are, develop while yet very young a sense of responsibility and a certain initiative seldom found in more tenderly nurtured children. It is the normal thing in the life of a girl in our neighborhood when she reaches the age of eight or nine years to have solely in her charge a younger brother or sister. When she jumps rope or plays jacks or tag she does it with as much joy as her sister of happier circumstances--but with a deftness foreign to the sheltered child she tucks away under her arm the baby, which after six weeks becomes almost a part of herself. Often we will fearfully exhort her to hold the baby's back, etc. Invariably the child will smile indulgently at us, as at a likeable but irresponsible person, and change the position of the infant not one whit. She is really the mother, she feels, with a mother's knowledge of what the baby needs; we are only nice library teachers. Their pride in the baby and their love for it sometimes even exceeds that of the mother who is forced to be so much away from the little ones. From five years of age the boys are expected to manage for themselves--to fight their own battles, literally--and to look out for themselves in general. Naturally they possess a self-reliance greater than other children of their age. We come into contact with this in the library in the child's more or less independent choice of books and his free criticism--often remarkably keen-- of the contents. Another place where the children show initiative is in the formation of clubs, which is a great diversion of theirs. Seldom does a week pass without a crowd of children coming to us petitioning for the use of one of the club rooms. Often these clubs are of short duration, but some of them have been in existence for years. Sometimes they are literary, sometimes purely social--but more often dramatic. In the dramatic club the children, starved for the brighter things of life--can pretend to their hearts' content, and their keen imagination can make it all vividly realistic for them. They choose their own plays, draw the parts, make their costumes and carry out their own conception of the different roles. Astonishingly well they do it too. Is it any wonder that with their drab unhappy lives in mind, fairies and beautiful princesses figure largely? It seems to me that a singularly pathetic touch is the fact that yearly the "Merry Making Girls Club" spends weeks and weeks of preparation for an entertainment given for the benefit of the Pure Milk and Ice Fund for the poor babies of St. Louis, they themselves being the most liable to become beneficiaries of the fund.