fifty books to a room, from the third grade to the ninth, to be
kept until the summer vacation, when they are returned for
repairs and renewal. The number circulated during the school
year has grown from 6,384 in 1899-1900 to 17,270 in 1912-13. The
children's applications are sent to the main library, and no
child may have a card there and in a school branch at the same
time.

There were rumors for several years that the library would be
made free, and when it was at last announced in 1888 that
$250,000 had been given by the late J. Pierpont Morgan, his
father and two families related to them, on condition that
$150,000 more should be raised by private subscription to remodel
the Wadsworth Athenaeum, which then housed three libraries and a
picture- gallery, and to provide for its maintenance, the rumor
bade fair to come true. That the money came in, is largely due to
the personal efforts of Charles Hopkins Clark, editor-in-chief of
the Hartford Courant, for many years treasurer of the Athenaeum,
the Watkinson Library and the Hartford Public Library, and the
sum required was promised in 1890. Later the library offered the
free use of its books, and also the income of about $50,000 to
the city, on condition of keeping its form of government by a
self-perpetuating corporation.

The first step towards the enlarged use of the library was to
separate the children's books and classify them. We had had a
fixed location up to that time, and I had not yet broken loose
from it, but I numbered them according to the best light I had,
though in a very short time I saw that with the increased number
of duplicates we had to buy, only a movable location was of the