Explore "The Librarian at Play" by Edmund Lester Pearson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(Scene: The Circulating Department of the -- -- Public Library. Time: Four o'clock of a Saturday afternoon in the winter. Miss Randlett and Miss Vanderpyl, library assistants, are taking in books returned, and issuing others to a group of persons, varying in number from ten to fifty. The group includes men and women, youths and maidens, -- a number of high-school students being conspicuous. Edgar, Alfred, and Dan -- library pages -- going forward and back from the desk to the book-stack, fetching books called for. Sometimes they bring only the call-slips with the word "OUT" stamped thereon. A sign on the desk bears the inscription: "Please look up the call numbers of any books that you wish in the card catalogue. Write the numbers on a call-slip, and present the slip at this desk. " About fifty per cent of the people pay no attention whatever to the sign.)
A small man in a large ulster, addressing Miss Vanderpyl, in honeyed tones: "Oh, pardon me! Have you 'The Blandishments of Belinda' in this library?"