Mr. Hadley makes one suggestion which has often been under discussion in library school alumni associations, and which I happen to know was very seriously considered by the faculty of one library school some five years ago. This suggestion is that the schools provide courses of instruction in general library administration for those who look forward to administrative positions. Most of the schools have lectures each year from librarians of various sorts of libraries--large, small, public, university, etc.,--in which they are asked to tell in general terms how their libraries are administered. The question is, can the schools go further than this? Is there a science of administration which can be taught? The qualities needed for administrative work, library or other, are the gift of the gods, not of the schools. The schools can give the students a firsthand knowledge of the various phases of library work, and this is important. But they cannot give breadth of view to a mind naturally narrow; nor can they endow the student with personal force and poise, tact, _savoir-faire_, sympathy, a sense of justice,--in a word with gumption. Now a course of formal instruction in administrative gumption is one that no librarian with any gumption would attempt to give. The whole school of life is devoted to this course, and few degrees are conferred. He would be a god-like instructor indeed who could impart to his students the gifts of the gods as developed and perfected by the great school of experience. Anything less than the thunders of Sinai would be an inadequate introduction to such a course. What I am trying to emphasize is that the essential qualities for administrative work are too general and intangible to be taught formally in any kind of school. The schools cannot give their students a knowledge and love of books; these, for the most part, they must bring with them. Neither can they give them a knowledge of life. Are they not, therefore, by the very nature of the case, restricted to teaching chiefly the technique, I had almost said the mechanics, of library work? A knowledge of the technique is necessary to the administrator; but the ability to make the best use of this technique is a natural endowment developed by experience and environment through the course of years. Have we any right to expect a library school to provide more than a small part of that experience and environment? Are we not asking of the library schools what no other profession expects from its special schools? Do we get our bankers from business colleges, or the managers and presidents of our railroads from schools of engineering? Some one has said that knowledge is the material with which wisdom builds. The library schools can impart a knowledge of library methods. They can hardly teach the wise use of those methods. They can suggest and illustrate it; but courses of instruction in administrative wisdom are, I fear, an iridescent dream.