On the whole, my own preference is for the stationary library, when the school can afford a good one; but one’s preferences may be modified, or even reversed, in altered circumstances. Whichever plan be adopted, supervision, or rather sympathetic guidance, is essential. Such guidance will, of course, be entirely of a positive, not a negative kind, and will consist of tactful suggestion, suggestion as unobtrusive as possible, by means of story-telling, illustrated talks, and personal help. There is not the slightest need for attempting to fit the book to the child. Let children read books for grown-ups if they have a mind to, let boys read girls’ books; the girls will read the boys’ books whether you want them or no. It is taken for granted that the whole library will be well-chosen, and everything in it worth reading. Alarmist nonsense, emanating from English justices or militant New England moralists, about boys led into crime by stories of brigands and pirates, are not likely to upset parents or librarians with all their faculties about them, including a normal sense of humour. If you listened to these people, Stevenson and Dumas would have to be put into a strait jacket, and Michael Scott, Aimard, and Mayne Reid burned by the hangman. It is the last expiring gasp of the prudery and lust for chastening the young which made the old-fashioned library for children a byword. Far more important than any anxiety about moral or immoral influence is an anxiety about good literature. Edification is thrown away if the well-meaning author is unpossessed of charm. The first requisite of a spell is that it shall work. Happily, the charm of fine literature can hardly be attained but by the fine personality. Good literature is healthy literature. Among the books a child will read with delight, it is doubtful indeed whether a single example can be found of a work of true literary worth that could lead a child astray. Harrison Ainsworth’s _Jack Sheppard_ and Lytton’s _Paul Clifford_ perished from the catalogues of junior libraries, not because they were wicked books, but because they were bad literature. The best books should be duplicated over and over again, especially in libraries that let their young readers roam along the book-shelves and choose what they like--as all libraries should; and duplicated as far as possible in various editions, especially illustrated editions. This is a far wiser policy than aiming at a very comprehensive selection, which means that quantities of second and third-rate stuff will be introduced. After all, if life is short childhood is much shorter, and if every child had the opportunity of reading all the books that are fit, there would not be much time left before the date arrived for migrating to wider spheres.