frequently try one's patience, however angelic
and forbearing. So, too, the short-comings of library assistants or
associates may often annoy him, but as all these trials have been before
referred to, it may be added that they are not peculiar to library
service, but are liable to occur in the profession of teaching or in any
other.

In the next place, the peculiar variety and great number of the calls
incessantly made upon the librarian's knowledge, constitute a formidable
draft upon any but the strongest brain. There is no escape from these
continual drafts upon his nervous energy for one who has deliberately
chosen to serve in a public library. And he will sometimes find, wearied
as he often must be with many cares and a perfect flood of questions,
that the most welcome hour of the day is the hour of closing the
library.

Another of the librarian's vexations is frequently the interference with
his proper work by the library authorities. Committees or trustees to
oversee the management and supervise expenditures are necessary to any
public library. Sometimes they are quick-sighted and intelligent persons,
and recognize the importance of letting the librarian work out everything
in his own way, when once satisfied that they have got a competent head
in charge. But there are sometimes men on a board of library control who
are self-conceited and pragmatical, thinking that they know everything
about how a library should be managed, when in fact, they are profoundly
ignorant of the first rudiments of library science. Such men will
sometimes overbear their fellows, who may be more intelligent, but not so
self-asserting, and so manage as to overrule the best and wisest plans,
or the most expedient methods, and vex the very soul of the librarian. In
such cases the only remedy is patience and tact. Some day, what has been
decided wrongly may be reversed, or what has been denied the librarian
may be granted, through the conversion of a minority of the trustees into
a majority, by the gentle suasion and skilful reasoning of the librarian.

There are other drawbacks and discomforts in the course of a librarian's
duties which have been referred to in dealing with the daily work under
his charge. There remains the fact that the profession is no bed of
roses, but a laborious and exacting calling, the price of success in
which is an unremitting industry, and energy inexhaustible. But these
will not appear very formidable requisite