a large one; and the personal influence of
their custodian and administrator may count for more. An
early statement placing emphasis on this fact by Miss West
of the Milwaukee Public Library (now Mrs. Henry L.
Elmendorf) appears in the subjoined paper read at the
Buffalo Conference of the American Library Association in
1883.

Theresa West Elmendorf, who as the writer of this paper was
Theresa Hubbell West, was born at Pardieville, Wis., Nov. 1,
1855, educated in Milwaukee and served on the staff of the
public library of that city, being deputy librarian in
1880-92 and librarian in 1892-96. In that year she married
Henry L. Elmendorf, then librarian of the Buffalo Public
Library, and since his death in 1906 she has been
vice-librarian there. In 1911 she was chosen president of
the American Library Association--the first woman to hold
this office.

There is still, as in the days when the story of the "wicked and
slothful servant," who contemptuously hid his one talent in a napkin,
was told, something discouraging in the sight of incomparably greater
opportunities than our own in the hands of another.

The librarian of a small town or village may not cherish the envy of
the man in the parable in his heart, and yet feel a certain depression,
a sense that the small things he is striving--perhaps with all his
might--to accomplish amount to very little, as he listens to plans for
the construction of a building which will commodiously and conveniently
house two millions of books; as he ponders over a printed scheme which
will intelligently order upon the shelves a hundred thousand volumes,
and is yet so flexible, so elastic, that this number may be indefinitely
increased with no confusion, no necessity for rearrangement; as he sees
a method of charging which has been slowly evolved to meet the
ever-varying, ever-increasing needs of a circulation whose daily issues
are counted by thousands.

Possibly this feeling has something to do with the small representation
in this Association of the hundreds of lesser libraries which are
scattered through the land. Whether it has, or not, the fact of this
meagre representation remains, and remains to be regretted. That such a
state of things is to be deprecated by the society goes without saying.
Every new member, in one way or another, brings an added power and
influence, which is by no means always to be measured b