Now for results. The commission has thus aided in establishing, in four years, more than sixty free public libraries in small towns (out of one hundred and four not thus supplied) and its action has shamed a few larger towns into establishing them; so that now only two and three fourths per cent of the population of the state, in forty-four small towns, were in January, 1894, without their advantages. And this has been accomplished with an entire expense to the commonwealth of less than ten thousand dollars. _Per contra_, more than half a million dollars were given by individuals in a single year for similar purposes within the state. Certainly, this has been a most economical and effective public outlay; free, too, from all suspicion of any one's fattening by political jobbery. The record of New Hampshire is even more remarkable. This state passed a law in 1891, similar to the one outlined above, and over eighty towns accepted its provisions, and established free libraries within a twelvemonth after it came in force. We are glad to read that the states of Maine, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are moving in the direction of a measure that has proved so effective in its operation, and that must be so widely beneficent. The state of New York has adopted another system to stimulate the development of the free library. Her enabling act of many years ago produced, as we have seen, comparatively small results; and in 1892 a law was passed authorizing the Regents of the University of New York to lend for a limited time--usually six months--selections of books from the duplicate department of the state library, or from books purchased for the purpose, to any public library in the state; or, where none exists, to twenty-five petitioners in any town or village of the state. A fee of five dollars is required, to cover cost of transportation, catalogue, etc., for a loan of one hundred volumes, and a smaller sum (three dollars) for a loan of fifty volumes. This plan, it will be seen, is a revival of the old school district method; and of that instituted by Samuel Brown in Scotland, and the later one found successful in Australia. The antipodes have a fashion lately of suggesting valuable object-lessons for social legislation. In small communities it has the advantage of making books do manifold duty, and of meeting the wants of varied communities and occupations. By judicious and varied selection, clubs, classes, schools, and reading circles may be aided in special courses and investigations. At the end of twenty months one hundred and twenty-five of these free loan libraries had been sent out by the New York Board of Regents; of which nearly one half (44) went to communities without public libraries, the remainder going to libraries already established (22), to university extension centers (18), and to academy libraries open to the public (22). Eleven thousand nine hundred volumes were thus made accessible to the public, with a total circulation of not