sunny rooms and a smaller one adjoining in an old-fashioned house
next door, which belonged to the Athenaeum and had been released
by the removal of the Hartford Club to a large new house across
the street. We opened rooms in November, just before
Thanksgiving, and from then till New Year's Day we received gifts
from many friends: a pair of andirons for the open fireplace,
several pictures, a check "for unnecessary things" from one of
the women's clubs, another for wall-decoration from teachers,
students and graduates of the Albany Library School, fifty
Japanese color-prints of chrysanthemums from the Pratt Institute
children's room, a cuckoo clock that is still going, though it
demands a vacation about once a year, and a Boston fern that is
now in flourishing condition. A large Braun photograph of the
Madonna del Granduca came later from the Pittsburgh School for
Children's Librarians.

The furniture is of the simplest kind. We used some tables that
we had, and bought one new one, some bentwood chairs for the
older children and others such as are used in kindergartens for
the younger. Pratt Institute lent us that first winter the very
attractive illustrations by the Misses Whitney for Louisa
Alcott's "Candy country." Some friends who were breaking up
housekeeping gave the room a case of native and foreign stuffed
birds with the hope that they might be as great a source of
pleasure to the children as they had been to them in their
childhood. Another friend sent us two trunks of curiosities from
Europe, Asia, Africa and North America, which are shown a few at
a time.

The next summer, 1905, the book-talks were about pictures in the