the library depends largely on the honor of readers, although some safeguards are provided.  All readers are required to enter their names and addresses in a book, and the volume on being given out is charged to them, to be checked off on its return:  it would be difficult, too, for a thief to purloin books without being detected by the employees or the porter in the vestibule.  Yet books are stolen occasionally.  In June, 1881, a four-volume work by Bentley on “Medicinal Plants,” valued at sixty dollars, was taken from the library.  It was soon missed, and search made for it without avail.  A few weeks later, however, it was discovered by the principal librarian in a Broadway book-stall and recovered.

Few strangers in the city depart without paying a visit to the Astor Library, and it is one of the few lions of the city that do not disappoint.  The main entrance is approached by two flights of stone steps, from the north and south, leading to a brownstone platform enclosed by the same material.  From this, broad door-ways give entrance to the vestibule, sixty feet by forty, paved in black and white marble, and wainscoted four feet above the floor with beautifully variegated marble from Vermont.  The panelled ceiling is elaborately frescoed, as well as the upper part of the walls.  Busts of the sages and heroes of antiquity adorn the hall.  From the vestibule a stairway of white marble, with massive newels of variegated marble, leads up to the library proper.  The visitor enters this in the centre of Middle Hall.  Before him, separated by a balustrade, are the desks and tables of the distributing librarian and his assistants.  The ladies’ reading-room is in the rear.  On the left and right arched passages give access to the North and South Halls, in which the main reading-rooms are situated.  The ceiling above is the skylight of the roof, and the alcoves, filled with the wealth of learning of all ages and peoples, rise on either hand quite to the ceiling.  At long, green-covered tables, ranged in two parallel lines through the halls, are seated the readers, in themselves an interesting study.  Scientists, artists, literary men, special students, inventors, and dilettante loungers make up the company.  They come with the opening of the doors at nine in the morning, and remain, some of them, until they close at five in the evening.  There are daily desertions from their ranks, but always new-comers enough to fill the gaps.  Their wants are as various as their conditions.  This well-dressed, self-respectful mechanic wishes to consult the patent-office reports of various countries, in which the library is rich.  His long-haired Saxon neighbor is poring over a Chinese manuscript, German scholars being the only ones so far who have attacked the fine collection of Chinese and Japanese works in the library.  Next him is a dilettante reader languidly poring over “Lothair:”  were the trustees to fill their shelves with trashy fiction, readers