Page:The Carnegie institute and library of Pittsburgh (1916).djvu/14

 to awaken an interest in literature by kindling the imagination and fostering a healthy liking for romance, and the success of the method is certainly proved by the fact that, after the hour, the children invariably demand "the book with the story."

The following bulletin of “the most popular books" hangs in the Children's Room of the Wylie Avenue Branch, which is situated in one of the poorest districts in the midst of a large foreign and negro element: The Story of Roland. Tales of the Alhambra. Kenilworth. Ivanhoe. The Boy's Percy. Story of King Arthur and his Knights, etc.

That these children voluntarily choose such books is surely a satisfactory indication of the value of the Story Hour, opening as it does a door out of their cramped lives into a new world of beauty and imagination. Bible stories are also enthusiastically received. One child recently put in a request at this Branch for "the book about Morris in the grass trunk that was drowned in the water'—which sorely taxed the Librarian's ingenuity until by a sudden inspiration she remembered Moses and the bulrushes!

The Library system is a great sympathetic plexus, stretching out living filaments into every quarter of the city. A large foreign population and small professional class make active and aggressive measures desirable in Pittsburgh. The Library must go out to the people; it cannot wait for them to come to it. Special distribution is also necessitated by the topography of the town, which is divided not only by three rivers, but by numberless hills, bluffs, and deep gullies. So, to reach these separate districts, the Library includes one hundred and seventy-seven