The librarian superintending another county system, a lady who has built it up from the foundation stone, has, after three years been able to announce an average circulation of two thousand books a week. This, in spite of difficulties of transport, and the absence of facilities for reaching the adult readers directly. The work here is done entirely through the schools, and of the eighteen thousand and odd borrowers recently on the register not much more than eight thousand are above school age. Nevertheless, she reports, even if the parents have “to snatch the books from the children or to wait patiently until they are all in bed” ... “the people will read if they get the chance.” “In one Cotswold village there are seventy readers, forty of whom are adults; among them are several farmers, a painter, a butcher, a sadler, domestic servants, railwaymen, builders, labourers, many mothers, and the postmistress. Forty books were sent there in January, and by June these books had 389 readers, an average of 9.5 readers per book. One teacher reports that his male readers include a carter, a cowman, a rivetter, farm-labourers, the policeman, a workhouse attendant, the night watchman, the schoolmaster, and the vicar. Another writes: “Our readers are chiefly as follows--cloth-workers, carpenters, clerks, plasterers, house-decorators, tailors, gardeners, printers, engine-drivers, ironworkers, chauffeurs, railwaymen.” When one looks at lists like these one realizes that to pack a box to meet all tastes is no easy matter. In Stroud there is an old lady of seventy-nine who borrows books regularly from the school, and at Coln St. Aldwyn, in the Cotswolds, a disabled soldier read, in three months, nineteen out of a possible twenty-six books. One of our former borrowers who came in by train every day left her book in charge of a porter in the evenings. It was some time before she discovered why he was so surly at times, and then she found she had changed her book before he had finished it!”[21] Here are samples of the letters received from imaginative school-children, who had been told about that inexhaustible treasure-house, the Central Library:--“Please send me a book on carpentering and oblige.” “Dear Sir, Could you kindly send me on one of your nature study painting books as you spoke of in our schoolmaster’s letter from you and oblige, Yours sincerely.” “Dear, Sir, I should be pleased if you would kindly forward me a book on the study of knitting a Jumper.” And here is an extract from a teacher’s account of her library centre:--