mentions, made by the judges' committee, which consisted of members of the editorial staff of The House Beautiful and the Atlantic Monthly Company, with certain professional artists, the publishers solicited an expression of the public taste. Visitors to the exhibition were asked to vote according to their individual choice, and the results, as recorded in the accounts posted from day to day, showed the winner to be in the main the favorite. The Exhibition Room never looked gayer; the designs ran riot through the whole gamut of color, and ranged from the most sedate pictures of prim doorways to distorted and fantastic visions of dream houses. The show was a revelation of the variety of ideas that two words may call up in the human mind. SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. Less colorful, but architecturally very satisfying, were the photographs of the work of Sir Christopher Wren displayed in commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of his death on February 25, 1723. This man was English architecture in his day, we are told. He made it, or rather, re-made it. St. Paul's Cathedral, the city churches of London, Greenwich Hospital, Hampton Court, the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, attest his genius. His career was long and full of lucky happenings. Born of a succession of English churchmen, brilliantly gifted himself, of rising fame in the mathematical sciences, he was wafted pleasantly by royal favor into the field. of architecture while he was still young. He had no special preparation for the work other than that given him by his scientific researches. Chance again intervened. The Great Plague of 1665 sent him travelling in France and observing. The great fire of London, 1666, gave him a clear foundation on which to erect a cathedral and many lesser churches. London as it is known to-day is the result. And many of our best old buildings in New England show his influence. How much of his work must needs be torn down, is the question which arises now, with the changed demands of modern times. The dates for the coming exhibitions are: Mar. 12. Municipal improvement. Fountains of Italy. C. H. SPECIAL LIBRARIES ASSO- The Special Libraries Association of Boston held a largely attended meeting on February 26 in the rooms of the Boston School of Filing, Little Building. The speakers were Mrs. Eugenia Chick, director of the School, and Mr. Lawrence P. Morse, head of the Research Department, Babson Statistical Organization. The Committee on Discarded Material reported that few of the libraries had as yet sent in lists of discards; it is hoped that other libraries will respond, and will consult the main list, kept in the Fine Arts Department of the Boston Public Library. Miss Briggs, of the Catalogue Department of the Harvard University Library, asked that all cataloguers, or those interested in cataloguing, send their names to her, with a view to forming a local Catalogue Group for professional and social meetings. Mrs. Chick told of the formation of the Library Bureau in 1876, and of its expansion in various directions, which has led it to take over the Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston Schools of Filing. She described the course of study offered at the School, and explained the alphabetic, numeric, automatic, geographic and subject methods of filing, not only the Library Bureau systems, but also those of the Amberg, Globe-Wernicke, Shaw-Walker and Yawman & Erbe companies. Mr. Morse gave an interesting talk on "Business facts; their organization and interpretation," which should be of value to library trustees and invest ment committees. He brought with him the well-known "Babson Chart," which is compiled from various "business barometers," to show the trend of business throughout the country from month to month and year to year, and described the various services which the Babson Organization offers its subscribers, such as investment opportunities, local industry surveys, etc. The Research Department obtains material for these services from newspapers, periodicals, clipping bureaus, federal and state reports, etc., and from a limited number of field surveys by means of questionnaires. Periodicals are routed to the staff for marking, and then clipped, classified and filed under a classification scheme worked out at the Babson Organization. A number of pamphlets on filing, and filing supplies, were distributed to the members, who were invited to inspect the numerous files used by the School in its work. The next meeting of the Association will be held at the Massachusetts State Library, on Monday evening, March 26, and the subject discussed will be "Documents." "AT IT AGAIN." L. A. S. meeting of the Club, held on Tuesday evening, February 20, when Mr. John Clair Minot, literary editor of the Boston Herald, was the speaker. Mr. Minot is not one of those who share the popular delusion that library attendants have nothing to do but leisurely read all the endless procession of "best sellers," which are constantly passing in review before them. Realizing that for most of us the review must of necessity be a hasty one, Mr. Minot came to present in tabloid form his impressions of the outstanding fiction of 1922 and the most distinctive books of the spring of 1923. He made pithy comments on the six most important English and the six most important American novels of the past year, and then passed to the new books of 1923. Some of those which he mentioned were: Mrs. Atherton's "Black Oxen," the novel that "shook New York to its foundation"; "Enchanted April," full of a delighful sparkle, by the author of "Elizabeth and her German garden"; and Zane Grey's "Wanderer of the Wasteland," a story of the desert which has been the best selling book in America since its publication in January. The next meeting of the Staff Club will be held on Friday evening, March 23, at 7.45, in the Staff Lecture Room. The Committee on Current Events have procured as speaker the Reverend. Henry Hallam Saunderson, D.D. Dr. Saunderson is a most earnest and convincing speaker, with an intimate knowledge of world events; his talk on "The Near East," which will include an outline of the origin of the Turkish people, and a discussion of the future of Russia, Germany, and the Balkan States, should be of general interest. BENEFIT ASSOCIATION. THE NEW CONSTITUTION. Years, numbers and resources have given to the Benefit Association a position of leadership among the organizations of the Library. Founded to help its members meet the emergencies. of life, the Association has gained dignity and strength with the passing of the years. A society that is responsible for the welfare of all will grow and flourish only as it serves its ends faithfully. Careful consideration of these ends will, it is hoped, be evident in the revision of the constitution, of which a draft will soon be sent to every member of the Association. The committee has striven to simplify the administration, to facilitate the post-card business, to offer plans for safeguarding and increasing the Association's funds, and to recommend salaries meeting in some degree the value of the financial and secretarial services rendered. It has endeavored to adjust benefits more closely to the proportion of dues paid; to define accurately the duties of officers; to increase the proportion of women on the Board of Directors (the membership of the Association now includes 97 men and 197 women); to bring the officers into closer relation with the members; to attract new members as soon as they enter the service; and, finally, to strengthen that important group, the Relief Committee, so as not only to afford financial help to members who are sick, but to give also the encouragement that is such a powerful aid in the recovery of health. No officers and no committees can manage any association alone. Each member will gain from the Association as much as he puts in; it is our Association, and if we all work for it, it will continue to be successful. L. E. T. RETURNS FROM THE PARTY. The returns from the Benefit Association party of February 9 are in at last, and amount to $144.62. In addition to money paid for tickets, this total includes two gifts from members of the Board of Trustees, one of fifty dollars from Mr. Louis E. Kirstein, and one of ten dollars from Mgr. Arthur T. Connolly, Vice-President of the Board. The Association is very grateful to these gentlemen for their generosity, which has so swelled the receipts of the evening. ANNUAL MEETING. The annual meeting of the Benefit Association will be held on Tuesday, April 3, at II a. m., in the Lecture Hall of the Central Library, for the election of officers and any other business that may properly come before the meeting. The nominations were printed in the January number of LIBRARY LIFE. THE SICK LIST. The Relief Committee reports that four more members are absent on account of illness, but that all are improving; they are Misses Mary McCready and Mary Santino, of the Issue Department; Miss Palmira Piciulo, of the Registration Department; and Mr. George C. Johnson, of the Fine Arts Department. COLLECTION OF BY-LAWS. The by-laws of local benefit societies, and of those connected with other libraries, which have been collected and compared by the Committee on Revision of the Constitution, have been given to the Library, and are now re served for the use of members of the Benefit Association at the Bates Hall Centre Desk in the Central Library. The list may not be without a certain interest: American Express Employees' Aid Society, 1913. Boston and Providence Relief Assn., 1896. Boston Firemen's Mutual Relief Assn., 1920. Boston Letter Carriers' Ben. Assn., 1912. Boston Police Relief Assn., 1915. Boston P. O. Clerks' Mutual Benefit Assn., 1922. Boston Teachers' Retirement Fund Assn. N. E. Tel. & Tel. Co., Plan for employees' pensions, 1920. N. Y., N. H. & H. R. R. Beneficial Assn., 1922. Patrolmen's Benevolent Assn., N. Y., 1915. Public Library Employees' Pension Fund, Chicago, 1915. S. S. Pierce Co.'s Emp. Ben. Assn., 1922. University Press Relief Assn., Inc., 1920. Winslow Bros. & Smith Co. Mutual Benefit Association, Pittsfield. Women's Educational and Industrial Union, Employees' Association, 1920. Workmen's Sick and Death Benefit Fund of the United States, 1921. WE GET TOGETHER. Half the fun of getting together is getting ready for it. Ask the Committee of Arrangements for the United Library, Getogether, All-in-One Jubilation held in honor of the Pension Committee in our Lecture Hall on Tuesday evening, April 3. It sounded mild when the party was first discussed. We wanted a few songs, a little play, one that we had done before at that, a minstrel show, ice cream and cake, something simple and informal-nothing more. Nothing more! Oh dear, no! All we wanted was to get together. But there was that in the process that has made the Committee feel like the youth who said that he went into the shower-bath a boy and came out a man. We of the Committee, whatever we were before, are now as men in experience. We have staged a play where a play had never been. We have produced a minstrel show with a singing, costumed chorus dancing in the spot-light, we have offered hospitality to our fellowworkers and their friends, all under our own Library roof. We have got together. Take the scenery. That was one thing that had to be got ready. Where MP4. 4.25.23: 750. SPECIAL LIBRARIES ASSOCIATION OF BOSTON 90 STAFF CLUB BENEFIT ASSOCIATION. . 91 92 was it to come from? At first blush, it would seem as if every other one of us in the Library was cousin to David Belasco. But, as it finally worked out, Mr. Chase was the man who secured us the stage-setting. On a blowy spring morning, he and another member of the Committee trotted gaily across to the Copley Theatre, our neighbor, and into Mr. Jewett's presence. We liked that. We liked being rung up on the telephone and hearing that Mr. Jewett would see us in his office. It made a bright spot in our library day. "She," said Mr. Chase, indicating his companion, "is the coach." "And what do you do?" said Mr. Jewett in a great rolling voice. "I for at my age the first time in my life. am taking part in a play," said Mr. Chase, and we all laughed gleefully and sat down. to talk of figures and dimensions. We could have anything in the theatre, it appeared, thanks to Mr. Jewett's generosity, if we would simply go after it (the scenery storehouse was at South Boston) and return it after it was used. Hurrah! REHEARSING. Days of rehearsing ensued. In the Staff Lecture Room a chorus was gently chugging about a bull-frog; the chink of tamborines slid past you in the hall; crimson-faced damsels climbed breathlessly down from the Lecture-Hall stage after a whole noon hour's arduous practice at their "steps" on a chalk-marked floor. And the orchestra and the end men and the people in the play were all getting in their work somewhere most of the time. Of course we fought. "That settles it for me; I'm done with this show," you could hear almost any day when a ruffled individual felt that something particularly unpleasant had been gratuitously dealt out to him. What we said about each other, and to each other; even worse, what we thought of each other and didn't say, must go unrecorded here. But it made getting ready a lively business. Regulations in regard to ice cream were brought up. How much an average man would eat; how to keep him from eating twice as much as his share, while some less expert individual went without, were new and knotty problems to be wrestled with. ANXIETIES. The possibility of going bankrupt stared the pessimistic members in the face. One department had taken only a pitiful few tickets. Ough! What was the matter? Weren't we working our heads off trying to get up a show trying to get together? We wondered, if we went into debt, whether the Committee would have to make up the deficit. Anxious thoughts these! On the day before the party the scenery arrived downstairs in our front hall. As it lay on the floor inside the vestibule, it seemed very large. The curtain pole, like the mast of a great ship, stretched almost from door to stairway. The problem was how to hoist it to the Lecture Hall. We stood about it and looked thoughtfully at one another. The chief engineer spoke of a derrick. The feminine portion of the committee withdrew, overwhelmed with a feeling of uselessness. Then the get-together spirit began to operate. It lifted scenery and curtain triumphantly from the vestibule floor and bore them on the shoulders of the men of the Library to the Lecture Hall stage. Clouds of dust, thick and white, rolled heavenward, but through it all the scenery still came on. And why not? Look who was there! Mr. Blaisdell, Mr. Chase, with Mr. Harry Mathews, Mr. Maiers, William Graham, Jimmie Kelly and John Lawrence, and goodness knows how many more whose names are left out, but who deserve to be entered in the Book of Gold for the work they did that day. Before long we were all set. Only a few details, remembered at the eleventh hour, threatened to paralyze the Committee mentally. Such as: "Have you seen Mr. Maiers?" "No, I haven't. Why?" "He promised to have two dozen safety-pins here by half-past one. Now, where is he?" Where? Heaven knows! Oh, there he is! "Mr. Maiers, about those safety-pins. Mr. Maiers turns white, seizes his hat, and dashes from the room. Again, one chances across a weary brother who says, "If I ever get into a thing like this again, I'll . . ." The rest is lost. This time it is the spot-light. The wretched thing is in South Boston and it weighs ten pounds. Who would believe that so many things theatrical come from South Boston? Scenery and curtain and even the spot-light! We must send for it by a special automobile. THE ASSEMBLY. And now the lights are up, the doors are opened, people are coming. See them! Mr. Fleischner is there, back to be one of us again since his departure last Saturday under the Retirement System, and Mr. Murdoch, ushering as vigorously as if a pension had never been thought of. And there comes Mr. Locke! The Pension Committee are in front, all together in a row, and Mr. Reagan from City Hall is with them. And Miss Nichols is there, too, and Mr. Wadlin with Mrs. Wadlin! This is a Library party! Casts and choruses are not developed over night. Mr. Appel's work at Christmas and again in April has shown how much can be done musically in the Library. In the field of the drama, we have worked now for two years and |