e even so simple a thing as an index.
Do not be impatient with his ignorance, although you may find him
fumbling over the pages in the body of the book in vain, to find what
you, with your acquired knowledge of indexes and their use, can find in
half a minute or less. Practice alone can make one perfect in the art of
search and speedy finding. The tyro who tries your patience this year,
will very likely become an expert reader the next. Wide as is the domain
of ignorance, there are few among those intelligent enough to resort to a
library at all, who cannot learn. You will find some who come to the
library so unskilled, that they will turn over the leaves even of an
index, in a blind, hap-hazard way, evidently at a loss how to use it.
These must be instructed first, that the index is arranged just like a
dictionary, in the alphabetical order of the names or subjects treated,
and secondly, that after finding the word they seek in it, they must turn
to the page indicated by the figure attached to that word. This is the
very primer of learning in the use of a library, but the library in any
town, used as it is by many boys and girls of all ages, has to be a
primary school for beginners, as well as a university for advanced
students. Despise not the day of small things, however you may find it
more agreeable to be occupied with great ones.

On the other hand, you will find at the other extreme of intelligence,
among your clientage of readers, those who are completely familiar with
books and their uses. There are some readers frequenting public
libraries, who not only do not need assistance themselves, but who are
fully competent to instruct the librarian. In meeting the calls of such
skilled readers, who always know what they require, it is never good
policy to obtrude advice or suggestion, but simply to supply what they
call for. You will readily recognize and discriminate such experts from
the mass of readers, if you have good discernment. Sometimes they are
quite as sensitive as they are intelligent, and it may annoy them to have
offered them books they do not want, in the absence of what they require.
An officious, or super-serviceable librarian or assistant, may sometimes
prejudice such a reader by proffering help which he does not want,
instead of waiting for his own call or occasion.

Let us look at a few examples of the numerous calls at a popular library.
For example, a reader asks to see a book, giving an account