The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-06-18

ally, and to wish for you most instructive and successful cone yention. Anything that we can do officially or personally 10 Do of assistance to you, please feel free to command.
 happen to Do commissioner, but not q stranger to libraries. In fact, I used t0 Do sort of an assistant librarian myself. Be- tween tho municipal building in Waterbury, which iB ono Of the works Of Class Gilbert, the famous architect, and tho railroad Bta. ton which oddly hes c tower built after the Tower Of Slena, there is an ivy clad brick building known aB tho eilas Bronson library, where 1 worked for q few years during my high school days taking in books that were returned and putting them in their proper places so we could find them when new customers wanted to take them out.
 It was Q typical woll-managed library of 6 growing industrial Connecticut community under the able management Of c lady who had 0 great influence on my life, Miss Helen spcrry, the sister of Rear Admiral Sperry, and she was Q good librarian.
 We had Jane Austen, Thackeray and Anthony Trollope on the shelves but their clientele, while respectable, was not too numer- ous. We were quite busy, how- ever, taking care of tho popular. ity in those days of Cyrus Town send Brady, whose romanceg of the South you will remember; Harold Macdrath, who could find love in Q hanson cab; Baroness Crozy, with her fine heroineg, and sti1itting heroes; Meredith Nicholson, who lighted his romancei with 8 thousand candles and George Barr McCutcheon, who made Q pleasant fairy land for every sales girl and Stenographer in his beloved 0rauStark. The short story had not quite come into It's own and those volumes were very few. The foreign language books were just being added to the equipment. The libraries were beginning to lend magazines, I was struck, however, by the en- thusiaSm and industry Of the young men in the factories of Wa. terbury who would haunt the shelves and tables at night de- vourlng technical books for the improvement of their own futures, We had q childrens room that was always between Q nursery and Q bedlaIn. We had 6 comfort able newspaper room upstairs and In the cold winters night, 1t was 8 happy meeting place for way ward sons. I used to have to put them out at 9 o'clock. The choicer volumes Of art and architecture and the technical sciences we kept under lock upstairs, principally for the research workers. Out side of the fact that in those days the profession was poorly paid, 1t seemed to me that it was not an unhappy life.
 Nor am I unfamiliar with othe libraries such as the fine ones W have here. The Hartford Public Lib rary has solved its problems in very practical way; particularly, fl the branch library system
 recall the facility with whicl the Supreme Court Library of tn United States, of which l had tn courtesy years ago. made availabl legal volumes when their physica arrangements were not at all to good. The library was then in tn old Supreme Court Room that is tn the court room used in the early day Of the Republic not the room the recently abandoned in the old Sen ate Chambers to go to their splendi, new building. It was in that room years ago, where that splendid at torney. Wilson of Baltimore. when the iadies of the Capitol all love when asked how his own argumen satisfied him replied that he did no know how the justices felt about !