Away up in the Bronx there is a "Cranford Club," so named by the girls because of their interest in the story to which they were introduced four years ago. This club is really a study club and contains a good proportion of its original members. They meet twice a month, and a leader is appointed for each meeting, who chooses her committee to report on the topic for the evening's study. The topic is sub-divided and each girl does her part in looking up the bit assigned to her. In this way they have studied the English poets Tennyson and Milton, although after spending an evening on Comus the club voted unanimously to change to Dickens. They have also studied Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier, and the girls were sufficiently familiar with these poems to recite many from each poet. Then the lives of three English queens were studied—"Bloody Mary," "Queen Elizabeth," and "Mary, Queen of Scots"; this year the Norse myths and stories from the Wagner operas. The librarian's part is to suggest the best books in which to find what they want, to get any book they may need, sometimes suggest a line of subjects to choose from, etc, but the work of preparing the material is done entirely by the girls. When a book is being read and discussed, they sit around a table and read in turn the bits that have been selected for them by the librarian, who tells them the thread of the story between selected bits read by the girls. Thus they have read "Cranford," "Pride and prejudice," "Old curiosity shop," "David Copperfield," and "Twelfth night." The teacher of English where most of these girls attend school was recently an interested visitor at the club, and she says she has noticed for a long time a difference in the school work done by these girls, from a broader viewpoint and outside atmosphere they brought to the class by their intelligent comments and criticisms, showing that they were reading outside and beyond the other girls of the class. She noticed also a difference in their composition work. One of the girls from that class was sent by this teacher to visit the library for the first time and when asked what she liked to read replied, "Wooed and married" and "How he won her" were nice books. The book given her instead of her favorites was Mary Johnston's "To have and to hold." It was read and enjoyed. Then she took Howells' "The lady of the Aroostook," and after the outline of the story had been told her seemed to read it with real pleasure. Next Owen Wister's "Virginian" was given her, but this she did not seem to care for. As a result of this reading her taste in a better kind of reading seems to have been pretty well established, as her librarian assures me that she has continued her reading along the line indicated by the above titles. The Belmont Club, the best boys' club for debating in the school, have challenged the "Cranford Club" to meet them in a debate on "Woman suffrage," to be held in the library at an early date. The girls have accepted the challenge, and the fact that the boys question their ability to equal them is sufficient spur to make them work every moment they can spare from their school duties to prepare for this important event. Added to this is the fact that every one of them is an ardent "suffragette."
The need of social centers in the schools and libraries is becoming insistent. The increasing demand on the part of children for clubs of all kinds shows plainly their desire for some place other than the street, where they can be amused and occupied in the natural desire for self-development and expression. Early last fall in one of the libraries the librarian met by appointment a group of girls from eleven to fourteen years old. These girls were wayward and troublesome, had formed a "gang" which was more difficult to control than the usual gang of boys. There was a room in her library quite apart from the rest of the building where they could meet as a club if it should prove desirable. "What would you like to do?" she asked. "Dance!" was the reply. "Well, then, dance, and show me what dances you like," replied the librarian, and immediately the girls formed for a figure of a folk-dance, and each girl humming softly the tune they danced it through. "The Girl Scouts" Club was formed, and in a day or two the secretary of the club submitted the following program for the librarian's approval: Program. 1. Chapter from the life of Louisa M. Alcott; 2. Recitations; 3. Games, Flinch; 4 One folk dance. From this beginning six other clubs have been established: two for the older girls, two for the boys, one for the little girls from eight to eleven years old, and one for a group of troublesome young men from sixteen to twenty years old. So keen has been the interest of these young people in these clubs that the "gang" spirit has long since disappeared, and at the end of the club season an open meeting was held, a program arranged in which members from each club took part, and the ushers and guards of honor were some of those same troublesome young men. There was no place in this community where the young people could meet for any kind of simple amusement, the only "social centers" being the cheap vaudeville theater, the usual moving picture show and the streets, until the little branch of the public library opened its doors, and so popular has the library become that 960 children have taken cards at the library since the first of September and are borrowing books on these. Besides the large number of card holders there is a still larger number of children who do all their reading and studying at the library. Although they may not know the old English verse from which the lines are taken they feel them:
"Where I maie read all at my ease, Both of the
newe and olde, For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke
Is better to me than gold."
The outline I have given will give you some idea of how we are developing the story hour and reading clubs in the New York Public Library. This work is made possible by the splendid cooperation on the part of the branch librarians and their assistants, without whom it would be impossible to carry on a work of such proportions.
HOME LIBRARIES
The history of the home library movement in its beginnings is recorded in a paper read before the Congress of Charities held in Chicago, June 15, 1893, by Mr. Charles W. Birtwell, general secretary of the Boston Children's Aid Society, who claims for it a "natural and simple origin," a method of multiplying the personal work which he was doing among the poorer children of Boston. Another paper on the same subject was read by Mr. Birtwell at the Lake Placid Conference of the A. L. A. in 1894.
Appreciation of this work is expressed in the 1915 report of the Children's Aid Society: "The most important service we render as a society is to show that the constructive forces within the average family, if properly directed, are tremendous in their power and effect. The home libraries do a work for children in their homes that is quite distinct from all the other services we render as a society."
Charles Wesley Birtwell was born in Lawrence, Mass., November 23, 1860, and graduated at Harvard in 1885. He was general secretary of the Boston Children's Aid Society from 1885 to 1911. He has been prominent in social and charitable work, and in 1887 originated the "home library" system of the Children's Aid Society, the first general plan of this kind on record.
The first Home Library was established by the Boston Children's Aid Society in January, 1887. Now it has seventy libraries here and there throughout Boston, and regards them as an important department of its work. The origin of the plan that has found so much favor in our eyes was simple. I had been connected with the Children's Aid Society but a short time when many avenues of work opened up before me, and it was quite perplexing to see how to make my relations to the various children I became acquainted with real and vital. Among other things the children ought to have the benefit of good reading and to become lovers of good books. Indeed, a great many things needed to be done for and by the children. Out of this opportunity and need the Home Library was evolved.
A little bookcase was designed. It was made of white wood, stained cherry, with a glass door and Yale lock. It contained a shelf for fifteen books, and above that another for juvenile periodicals. The whole thing, carefully designed and neatly made, was simple and yet pleasing to the eye.