and even through one winter when some specimens of the redheaded
woodpecker were on the edge of the city. Usually our winter
meetings were in the library, and we often had readings from
Burroughs, Thoreau, Frank Buckland and others of the earlier
nature-lovers. The children came from families of more than usual
intelligence, and some of them who now have well-grown children
of their own often refer with pleasure to our walks and talks.

I had taught for three years in a school where the children and I
were taken out of doors every week in spring and autumn by an
ornithologist and an entomologist. At this time we were beginning
to buy more books on out-of-door subjects, and I had learned
enough in my teaching to be able to evaluate them in a bulletin.

The years went on, with once in a while an encouraging report
about a boy who had made experiments from works on chemistry or
beguiled a fortnight's illness with Wordsworth's "Greece," or
Guhl and Koner's "Life of the Greeks and Romans," or had gone on
from Alger and Optic to Cooper, Lossing, Help's "Life of
Columbus" and Barber's "History of New England." Both boys and
girls were beginning to apologize for taking poor stories.

In one of our bulletins, January, 1881, is an acknowledgment of
Christmas material received from the advance sheets of Poole's
Index, then in preparation in the Watkinson Library, on the other
side of the building. Imagine life in a library without it, you
who have the Readers' Guide and all the debates and Granger's
Index to Poetry and the Portrait Index! Nevertheless, we were not
entirely without printed aids, for we had the Brooklyn catalog,
the Providence bulletins, and the lists of children's books