one of its best reasons for being, and it is for this reason that, when the library comes into its own, it will be a most important factor in education. Let us see to it that one door is kept open for those who discover themselves after school days are gone. There are thousands who fail to grasp their opportunities in the way and at the time that schools prescribe that they should. Some of these find themselves by living, by working, by accident it may be, or by any of the infinite ways in which humanity adjusts itself to its surroundings. For them the library is a path into fields of learning, into avenues of power that make all things possible. Here is the college of our self-educated man. There is no mystery about it. It is the natural result of following the inward light. We know that the better part of education is what we give ourselves. One should not use a single instance to prove a principle. It is not merely bad logic; it is not logic. Yet the fact that everyone who deals either with people or with books knows many such cases shows that the experience is universal. One day not long ago, as I sat alone in the office, a lad came in. "Mister, do you buy the books here?" I admitted complicity. "Will you buy one that I want?" I asked what it was. "Chickens." To cut the story short, I asked him to sit down and we talked about chickens, for I am something of a farmer. I found that he had read everything in the library on poultry and was hungry for more. He knew the hen intimately. He had mastered the genealogy, the sociology, the psychology, and the "Why" of hens. Furthermore, while he was doing time in school, he was also carrying on a successful chicken business on a city lot, from which business he had wrung two thousand hard dollars, which he had safely in the bank. He had already marked down a little farm near the city which would be his as soon as he had "completed his education" in the grammar school, and then he would make the feathers fly. I am glad to say he got his book, and I added another lesson to the many my boys have taught me. What is our concern with this lad? He is a type of what I have in mind. I do not value him for his ability to make money. Men make money who aren't worth a cent. I measure him by his value as a producer, by his value to humanity as an example, and by his value to a library as a walking delegate for free and unrestricted choice in books. He is an educated man, joyfully occupied in something which engages every faculty of his mind, which he loves, understands, and has mastered for himself. Your country and mine will be the better the more they can grow of that sort of man. He has made good; he has arrived. And to arrive somewhere, under your own steam, is a great thing in life. You might not get the answer you were looking for, but you could not get a foolish answer, if you asked him of Chanticleer.