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Another drawback to be recognized in the librarian's calling is that there are peculiar trials and vexations connected with it. There are almost no limits to the demands made upon the knowledge and the time of the librarian. In other professions, teaching for example, there are prescribed and well-defined routines of the instruction to be given, and the teacher who thoroughly masters this course, and brings the pupils through it creditably, has nothing to do beyond. The librarian, on the other hand, must be, as it were, a teacher of all sciences and literatures at once. The field to be covered by the wants of readers, and the inquiries that he is expected to answer, are literally illimitable. He cannot rest satisfied with what he has already learned, however expert or learned he may have become; but he must keep on learning forevermore. The new books that are continually flooding him, the new sciences or new developments of old ones that arise, must be so far assimilated that he can give some account of the scope of all of them to inquiring readers. In the third place, there are special annoyances in the service of a public, which includes always some inconsiderate and many ignorant persons, and these will 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 requisites to those who have a native love of work, and it is a fact not to be doubted that work of some kind is the only salvation of every human creature. Upon the whole, if the calling of the librarian involves many trials and vexations, it has also many notable compensations. Foremost among these is to be reckoned the fact that it opens more and wider avenues to intellectual culture than any other profession whatever. This comes in a two-fold way: first, through the stimulus to research given by the incessant inquiries of readers, and by the very necessity of his being, as a librarian; and secondly, by the rare facilities for investigation and improvement supplied by the ample and varied stores of the library always immediately at hand. Other scholars can commonly command but few books, unless able to possess a large private library: their researches in the public one are hampered by the rule that no works of reference can be withdrawn, and that constitutes a very large and essential class, constantly needed by every scholar and writer. The librarian, on the other hand, has them all at his elbow. In the next place, there are few professions which are in themselves so attractive as librarianship. Its tendency is both to absorb and to satisfy the intellectual faculties. No where else is the sense of continual growth so palpable; in no other field of labor is such an enlargement of the bounds of one's horizon likely to be found. Compare it with the profession of teaching. In that, the mind is chained down to a rigorous course of imparting instruction in a narrow and limited field. One must perforce go on rehearsing the same rudiments of learning, grinding over the same Latin gerunds, hearing the same monotonous recitations, month after month, and year after year. This continual threshing over of old straw has its uses, but to an ardent and active mind, it is liable to become very depressing. Such a mind would rather be kept on the qui vive of activity by a volley of questions fired at him every hour in a library, than to grind forever in an intellectual treadmill, with no hope of change and very little of relief. The very variety of the employments which fill up the library hours, the versatility required in the service, contributes to it a certain zest which other professions lack.

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