Brown’s sixteen years at Clerkenwell made the library perhaps the most reputed in the country. Mr Jast may be quoted upon this: “Mr Brown’s influence and reputation extended far beyond his own country. Foreign librarians visiting London almost invariably made for two places; one was the large and handsome room overlooking a stately west-end square, which Mr J. Y. W. MacAlister occupied for so many years; and the other was a small room, high up in a rather dingy-looking triangular building, overlooking a dingier street in Clerkenwell, which was so hidden away that one rather stumbled upon it than found it, where Mr J. D. Brown worked in his official capacity as Librarian, before he was called to a sphere more worthy of his labours, in Islington. How many librarians, how many members of library committees, how many workers in the Library movement have been charmed, interested, and instructed in these two rooms?” Not only was he required to give advice in his own country; at different times he was called upon to lecture on “free public libraries” in the United States, in Holland and in Belgium. “A Bruxelles,” writes M. Paul Otlet, “il parla devant l’auditore du Musée du Livre et son succès fut très grand.” I cannot help thinking that his success depended more upon his subject and his clear writing than upon his speaking; he was on the whole an indifferent speaker, his nervousness was painful to himself and others, and his ineradicable Glasgow accent was a real obstacle. He told my wife that the only place in which he enjoyed speaking was the meetings of the Islington Staff Club; he confessed to a horror and nervousness in public speech.