Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/159

 Jottings. 147 Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn,' and that, if that was the book I wanted, I should have asked for it by its proper title. I bowed my head beneath the rebuke, and a few minutes afterwards I handed in a written request for another book, ' The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.' The librarian curtly assured me that no such book existed, and that he believed that I was having a game with him. And so I was, though not exactly the sort of game that he supposed." " THE Political Committee of the National Liberal Club are trying an interesting experiment in the formation of Circulating Village Libraries. To selected villages, boxes containing from fifty to one hundred volumes of carefully-selected books, comprising hisi >ry, biography, natural history, science, poetry and standard novels, are sent out. The boxes of books are placed in charge of persons willing to act as hon. librarians, and who undertake to be responsible for the safe custody of the books. No charge is made for the boxes which are changed periodically, and the Committee has decided upon the localities which appear best adapted for giving the scheme a fair trial.'' After seeing these boxes we are not dis- posed to think they will do much more than just serve the members of village clubs preferably Liberal. Fifty or even a hundred volumes is a miserable provision for any village above the dimensions of a Highland clachan. FROM the Boston Public Library, in the United States, come some odd stories about persons of eccentric literary taste. One woman has taken out a volume of sermons every Friday for years (she does not care what the religious views of the writers are), and then on each succeeding Monday a novel " to unbend her mind again." Another wants only novels that have clergymen as their chief characters, and there is one old maid that cannot be induced to read any work written by a woman. MR. THOMAS GREENWOOD, author of Public Libraries, Sunday School and Village Libraries, &>., has removed from Stoke Newington to the country, and should be addressed in future at Frith Knowl, Elstree, Herts. AN American librarian has taken the trouble to compile statistics from all the libraries, as to what books are most in demand. It appears that Dickens still leads the way with David Copperfield. Then follows Scott's Ivanhoe, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Wallace's Ben Hur, G. Eliot's Adam Bede, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Miss Bronte's Jane Eyre, Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii, Mrs. Craik's John Halifax, Hugo's Les Miserables, Miss Alcott's Little Women, and Mrs. Burnett's Little Lord Fauntleroy. In the list of authors taken out, the prolific writers, of course, stand higher than those who have produced but few popular novels, Miss Louisa M. Alcott stands second on the list which is headed by Dickens. IN the Building News of December 29, appear two designs sent in for "A Village Library and Technical Institute." " M. DELISLE, the principal librarian at the Bibliotheque Nationale, in Paris, warns us that our modern literature is destined to perish. Of the two thousand and odd volumes published annually in France, not one, he thinks, will remain after a certain time. Cheap paper is a splendid thing in its way, but this is the price we must pay for it. Old-fashioned paper made from rags has stood the test of hundreds of years, as the