When I had told it, she begged me to tell another. Again I suggested various tales in my repertory. But she refused them all. "Tell about the man, and the dragon, and the ball of string, and the lady--" she began. And once more when I interposed, reminding her that she had just heard it, she once more said, "Yes; but I'd like to hear it again." Some of the children whom I have in mind as I write go to private schools and some of them go to public schools. It has not seemed to me that the results obtained by the one type of school are discernibly different from those produced by the other. In the private school there are fewer pupils than in the public school; and they are more nearly alike from the point of view of their parents' material wealth than are the pupils in a public school. They are also "Americans," and not "foreigners," as are so many of the children in city public schools, and even in the public schools of many suburbs and villages. Possibly owing to their smaller numbers, they receive more individual attention than the pupils of the public school; but, so far as my rather extensive and intimate acquaintance with children qualifies me to judge, they learn the same lessons, and learn them with equal thoroughness. We hear a great deal about the differences between public and private schools, and certainly there are differences; but the pupils of the public and the private schools are very much alike. It is considerably easier to distinguish a public from a private school than it is to tell a public- school child from a private-school child. [Illustration: THEY HAVE SO MANY THINGS!] There are many arraignments of our American schools, whether public or private; and there are many persons who shake their heads over our American school-children. "The schools are mere drilling-places," we hear, "where the children are all put through the same steps." And the children--what do we hear said of them? "They do not work at their lessons as children of one, two, or three generations ago did," is the cry; "school is made so pleasant for them!" Unquestionably our American schools and our American school-children have their faults. We must try to amend both. Meanwhile, shall we not be grateful that the "steps" through which the children are put are such excellent ones; and shall we not rejoice that school is made so "pleasant" for the boys and girls that, unlike the children of one, two, or three generations ago, they like to go to school? V THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY