Library Damaged by Carelessness.

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

May I ask you, and through you the many users of the Widener Library, to help us keep the building in good condition. For example--almost two thousand persons pass in and out of the north door and up and down the broad steps every day. It is natural that some should drop matches or cigarette stubs or scraps of paper as they go. But if everyone would use the receptacle at the top of the steps, placed there to hold such odds and ends, it would greatly improve the approach to the building. Moreover, tobacco, when wet by rain, makes an ugly stain on the stone.

Fountain pens are too great a convenience to be excluded from a library, but if used carelessly they permanently deface floors and tables, for ink-stains cannot be successfully removed from marble floors, cork carpets and polished oak.

The cost of cleaning the library amounts to something over $500 a month, but the effectiveness of the cleaning depends in part on the co-operation in little ways of all who frequent the building. Such co-operation we must count upon if we are to maintain our buildings in anything like its present freshness and beauty. WILLIAM C. LANE '81.   Librarian.