Furniture and books are comparatively simple matters to make ready, but to prepare your assistant or assistants for opening day and the time that follows is harder. The external preparation for the rush of the first weeks consists in drill in the routine to be observed. Assigning a place and certain duties to each person, foreseeing as far as possible all questions that may arise and making sure that each attendant understands what to do in any case, having a place for everything, and everything in its place, and every person knowing what that place is, so that there will be no frantic search for an extra set of daters when a long line of people stands waiting--this also requires only foresight and firmness. But so deeply to imbue your chief assistant with your spirit and principles of management that she will not simply obey your directions, but be inwardly guided by your desires, and there may be no break in the steady march to a definite end--this demands that rare species of assistant who is born, not made, for the position, and a leader who possesses strength, tact, contagious enthusiasm, a likeable personality, and other qualities difficult to attain. This brings us to the consideration of what the guiding principles of the new department are to be--a question which must be pondered and settled by the children's librarian before making the external preparations. If the senior members of the American Library Association, the librarians-in-chief, would consider the children's room of enough importance to give us their ideas of what it should stand for, what its scope should be, the result might be more uniformity of thought among members of the library profession in this regard, and a more sensible attitude toward the children's room in the library. Between those who, on the one hand, take themselves so very seriously, pondering with anxious care what probable effect on the child's future career as a reader the selection of a blue or a green mat for mounting the picture bulletin would have, and those who look upon the children's room merely as an interesting plaything, driving the big boys away in disgust by encouraging visitors who exclaim, "Oh, what cunning little chairs and tables! Why, you have a regular kindergarten here, haven't you?"--from either point of view, the discussions on children's rooms in libraries seem almost to lose sight of the very word library and all it carries with it.