e supplied with the books likely
to contain what they are in search of, and left to seek it in their own
way, with such hints and cautions as to saving time by taking the
shortest road, as the experience of the librarian enables him to supply.
The suggestions here given are not needed by scholarly readers, but are
the fruits of long experience in searching books for what they contain.

Again, let us take the case of a call by a reader who happens to be a
decorative painter, for patterns which may furnish him hints in finishing
an interior of a house. Of course he wants color--that is, not theory
only, but illustration, or practical examples. So you put before him Owen
Jones's Grammar of Ornament, or Racinet's _L'Ornement polychrome_, both
illustrated with many beautiful designs in color, which he is delighted
to find.

Another reader is anxious to see a picture of "St. George and the
Dragon." If you have the "Museum of Painting and Sculpture," in 17
volumes, or Champlin's "Cyclopaedia of Painters and Painting," a
dictionary of art in four volumes, you find it in either work, in the
alphabet, under "St. George," and his want is satisfied.

A youngster wants to know how to build a boat, and you find him Folkard
on Boats, or Frazar's Sail-boats, which describe and figure various
styles of water-craft.

Perhaps an inquisitive reader wants to find out all about the families of
the various languages, and what is known of their origin, and you supply
him with W. D. Whitney's "Life and Growth of Language," or Max Mueller's
"Science of Language," either of which furnishes full information.

Another inquirer seeks for information about the aggregate debts of
nations. You give him the great quarto volume of the last Census on
Wealth and Indebtedness, or for still later information the Statesman's
Year Book for 1899, or the Almanach de Gotha for the current year, both
of which contain the comparative debts of nations at the latest dates.

The inquirer who seeks to know the rates of wages paid for all kinds of
labor in a series of several years, can be supplied with the elaborate
Report on Labor and Wages for fifty-two years, published by the U. S.
Government in 1893, in four volumes.

Another reader wishes, we will suppose, to hunt up the drawings of all
patents that have been issued on type-writers, and type-writing
inventions. You put before him the many indexes to the Patent
Specifications and Patent Office Gazette; he ma