and applies the remedy. The best remedy (as I said in the case
of memory in another chapter,) is to cultivate a habit of trained
attention in whatever we do. Yet many people (and I am afraid we must say
most people) go on through life, making the same blunders, and repeating
them. It appears as if the habit of inaccuracy were innate in the human
race, and only to be reformed by the utmost painstaking, and even with
the aid of that, only by a few. I have had to observe and correct such
numberless errors in the work of well-educated, adult, and otherwise
accomplished persons, as filled me with despair. Yet there is no more
doubt of the improvability of the average mind, however inaccurate at the
start, than of the power of the will to correct other bad habits into
which people unconsciously fall.

One of the requisites of a successful librarian is a faculty of order and
system, applied throughout all the details of library administration.
Without these, the work will be performed in a hap-hazard, slovenly
manner, and the library itself will tend to become a chaos. Bear in mind
the great extent and variety of the objects which come under the care of
the librarian, all of which are to be classified and reduced to order.
These include not only books upon every earthly subject (and very many
upon unearthly ones) but a possibly wide range of newspapers and
periodicals, a great mass of miscellaneous pamphlets, sometimes of maps
and charts, of manuscripts and broadsides, and frequently collections of
engravings, photographs, and other pictures, all of which come in to form
a part of most libraries. This great complexity of material, too,
exhibits only the physical aspect of the librarian's labors. There are,
besides, the preparation, arrangement and continuation of the catalogue,
in its three or more forms, the charging and crediting of the books in
circulation, the searching of many book lists for purchases, the library
bills and accounts, the supervision and revision of the work of
assistants, the library correspondence, often requiring wide researches
to answer inquiries, the continual aid to readers, and a multitude of
minor objects of attention quite too numerous to name. Is it any
over-statement of the case to say that the librarian who has to organize
and provide for all this physical and intellectual labor, should be
systematic and orderly in a high degree?

That portion of his responsible task which pertains to the arra