CHAPTER XI.

(Extract from the New York “Tribune.”)

BOOKS FOR THE MILLION! HELP FOR THOSE WHO WILL HELP THEMSELVES.

It has been understood that Miss Mildred Brewster, the Boston heiress and philanthropist who has recently been making such a sensation in New York society, was quite inaccessible to reporters. But yesterday a member of the “Tribune” staff was so fortunate as to gain a gracious reception, and to learn certain facts which will be of great interest to the public in general.

Miss Brewster was found in her pretty parlor at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, dressed to attend a reception, in an exquisite robe of golden-brown velvet, simply made, and worn with a unique girdle and collar of

RARELY BEAUTIFUL CAMEOS.

Miss Brewster said that she was waiting for her carriage, but was not in haste, and would be pleased to make an authentic statement in regard to certain facts of which there had been vague rumors in the papers of late.

She began by saying that she supposed the newspaperswould learn it indirectly sooner or later, and therefore she might as well give the facts so that they should be stated accurately. What followed will be given as nearly as possible in Miss Brewster’s own words.

“When I was a child,” she said, “I spent several years in some of the frontier towns of our Western states, where my father was vainly seeking for a climate which would prolong his life. I had an opportunity there to observe many things which I have never forgotten. I understood them but dimly then, but as I grew to womanhood in my New England home, surrounded with the privileges and traditions of an older and more distinctly American civilization, I often contrasted my life with what it would have been had I grown up among the German farmers, rough cowboys, greedy land speculators, and half-starved home missionaries, who formed the chief part of the people whom we met in the little towns along the railroad on the Western prairies.

“I was too young to appreciate the value of the indomitable energy of this pioneer work. I saw only the sordid, unpicturesque side of it then.

“I hated the tornadoes and blizzards; I loathed the sloughs and muddy streams—the everlasting dullness of the prairie and the prosaic struggle for existence in the little clusters of board shanties or in the isolated log cabins and dug-outs. I longed for the hills and granite bowlders, for the great elms and sparkling streams of New England, andfor the refinements and conveniences of my Eastern home.

“How well I recall the tired, overworked women, toiling over their cooking-stoves, with no household conveniences, milking, churning, mending, washing, feeding the pigs, selling eggs, and making themselves prematurely old that their children might have a ‘better chance.’

“I remember, with my insatiable love of reading, how my first glance on entering a house was in search of book-shelves. Many a time, though in the house of a man owning hundreds of cattle and a thousand acres of land, I have found no literature beyond a copy of the Bible but little used, the State Agricultural or Mining Reports, or a stray copy of ‘Godey’s Lady’s Book.’

“But, as an offset to this prosaic life, I remember also, as I look back upon it now, the hopefulness and cheerfulness, the ambition and self-sacrifice, and the sturdy courage and self-reliance which all this new Western life engendered.

“There was much that was admirable about it all, and that gave promise of the development of great men and women and a glorious future for that part of our country. Yet I know that in many instances, except where a colony of Eastern people had settled and put up their schoolhouse and church before there was an opportunity to build a gambling den and saloon, the early influences which shaped the future of the towns were like the sowing of dragon’s teeth, which have brought forth, as I have taken pains to learn, most deadly fruit.

“It is more than sixteen years since I have been in the West, and I intend now to revisit it. Of course I shall see an astonishing change. I read of opera houses and electric lights in the places that I remember as mere shabby settlements of a hundred shanties. But the same condition of things that I knew then is still to be found in a thousand places further west, or off the line of the main roads, and it will continue for a half century to come. Hundreds of thousands of ignorant emigrants are pouring into this land, with throngs of alert young business men from the East, all making a breakneck race for wealth. They are buying the

LAST REMNANTS OF GOVERNMENT LAND,

and are developing the material resources of the country at an amazing rate. The shanties will give place to brick blocks, and the sloughs to paved streets, soon enough. I am not concerned as to that.

“The luxuries of civilization will come as rapidly as one could wish, but it is the tendency of things in regard to the development of morals and character that alarms me. When I learn that one third of our school population in this land of boasted educational privileges is ignorant of the alphabet, and that in the Rocky Mountain states and territories there is one saloon for every forty-three voters; when I read how the peasants of Europe are flocking by the hundred thousand to thisfair Western land, and I see the possibilities of the future for good or evil, it wakens all my ardor and enthusiasm to be up and doing and lending a hand to help shape its destiny.

“There are many who, not falling under good influences at once, lapse into a selfish indifference to everything but their own worldly advancement if they do not retrograde morally. I do not mean that they are heartless. They have, of course, the proverbial Western generosity and frank cordiality, which is one of the finest things in the world and is very genuine; but it is often coupled with an absolute contempt for everything beyond that which will advance their purely material interests. In short, they are ‘Philistines.’

“I have seen many Western men who have made their ‘pile,’ as they say, who would find it absolutely impossible to believe in any one’s having such a real, disinterested enthusiasm for art, or science, or literature as would permit a man like Agassiz to say:

‘I HAVE NO TIME TO MAKE MONEY.’

“Do not misunderstand me. I would throw no slurs on Western men. There are thousands in New England as all-absorbed in money-getting as they, only there is this saving difference: Here, these men are, in spite of themselves, under the influence of traditions and institutions founded by better men than they; and there, they are the creators of the traditions and institutions which are tobe and which will of a surety be no better than they choose to make them.

“It is the early settlers that shape the future of the country. Massachusetts, New Jersey, South Carolina are to-day what their first settlers made them.

“I believe in the New England principles, and in the men who sought New England’s shores, not to find gold, to speculate in land, to buy bonanza farms, but to found a commonwealth such as mankind had never seen, a commonwealth whose corner-stones should be righteousness and ideas.

“It is these New England principles that I would engraft upon that great empire of the West, which to-day is so plastic in our hands, whose future we, to-day, have power to shape, but which to-morrow we shall be powerless to mould.

“I would teach them that all their limitless material resources cannot make them the real power in the land that little, sterile Massachusetts, with her east winds and rocky soils, has been, unless they first plant the seed that shall bring forth such men of character and thought as New England has borne.

“Why was it that so many of the men of this century, whom the nation most delights to honor, Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Bryant, Whittier, Holmes, Beecher, Curtis, Garrison, Phillips, Webster, were sons of this New England soil?

“I know that I am saying nothing new. All this is very trite, as trite as the Ten Commandments.It has been said a thousand times; yet half our people do not know it or believe it, and serenely smile at what they call our ‘Eastern egotism.’ I confess that we have quite too much of that. I, for one, have almost as hearty a contempt as any of them for the men who

... ‘sit the idle slaves of a legendary virtueCarved upon their fathers’ graves.’

... ‘sit the idle slaves of a legendary virtue

Carved upon their fathers’ graves.’

“Let no one think that I am boasting of the New England of to-day. I am simply saying that the principles which have made her a power in this nation are the principles by which, in East and West, in North and South, this nation must rise, or without which she must fall. And if the nation is to be saved,

THE WEST

must be saved. No man needs to be told thatthereis to be the true seat of empire.

“To me, this present war, waged between the forces of good and evil, for the conquest of this land, has an all-absorbing interest. Surely, as I have said, this generation will not pass away before the fate—that is to say, the influences which are chiefly to control the destinies of millions yet unborn—of this great nation will be settled.”

As Miss Brewster uttered these words her cheeks glowed, and her whole frame seemed to quiver with the intensity of her feeling. She rose and restlessly paced the floor as she continued:

“I have said all this because I want it understoodwhy I intend to devote a large share of my property to sowing all over the West and South the seeds of what I count as best, in the form of

FREE READING-ROOMS AND CIRCULATING LIBRARIES.

“I have been for some time carefully studying into this subject, and I have learned some facts which are rather startling when one considers the inference which must be drawn from them.

“Let me give you a few of these facts,” said Miss Brewster, seating herself at her desk and drawing some papers from a pigeon-hole.

“Taking all the libraries which contain more than one thousand volumes, and are absolutely free to every one, I find that in Massachusetts there are two hundred, and in other New England states—and some of the Middle states as well—a number approximating that. But what do I find in the West and South? I find that Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, Montana, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Washington and Dakota territories, and New Mexico, have

NOT ONE FREE GENERAL LIBRARY.

I find that Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Colorado have but one each; and that Louisiana and Maryland have none outside of the one largest city in each.

“Of course what I have said does not imply that there are no libraries in the states referred to. Butit does mean that there are but few, and that those few are either subscription libraries or else belong to schools or institutions, and are not open to the general public.

“How is this all to be explained? Is it sufficient to say that the West is young and that the South is poor and sparsely settled? The West is young, indeed, but not too young to have magnificent opera houses, hundreds of millionaires’ palaces, and, in many of the new cities, richer clothes for every one and more of them than the average New Englander thinks he can afford.

“The South is poor, very poor, and very sparsely settled compared with the North. But the fact that in those Southern states which I have mentioned there is not one free library open to all, such as one may find in scores of little villages in the North, is not due entirely to poverty.

“Even New York State, with her superior wealth and population, and with an aggregate number of all kinds of libraries nearly as great as that of Massachusetts, has

NO MORE THAN THIRTY

which are absolutely free and general as compared with the two hundred such in Massachusetts. And Pennsylvania, with all her wealth and numbers, shows no more than ten such libraries.

“The farther one travels from New England, the more surely does one find public sentiment indifferent to these matters, and whole communitiespreferring to tax themselves for the adornment of their cities, rather than to provide every poor man with books. Books are considered a luxury, not a necessity; to be indulged in only by those who can afford to pay for them.

LEARNING FOR ALL

was the idea of the men who made the North what it is. Learning for the few was the idea of the men who made the South what it is. And the men of this generation are reaping the harvest of the seed which those men sowed.

“Now I propose, as soon as practicable, to assist in putting into several thousand little communities in the West and South either a free reading-room or a free circulating library, or both, thinking that it will be the best possible use to which money can be put.

“Perhaps it may be wondered at that I do not spend these millions in the direction of Home Missionary work. I have several reasons for not doing so, although I am heartily in sympathy with it. Never was there nobler, more self-denying and more fruitful labor than that of the overworked men and women in the Home Missionary field. But, in the first place, there are one hundred needed where one can be found to go. The religious denomination in which I was reared graduates but about one hundred students from all its theological seminaries every year, scarcely enough, one would think, to supply the vacancies in the pulpits of theEast, to say nothing of the West, and I presume the same is nearly true of other denominations which I should be quite as ready to help as my own.

“The library can never take the place of the church, but I am convinced that in many communities the provision of a comfortable, tastefully furnished room, filled with periodicals, giving to every one access to the best literary, political, scientific, and religious thought of our time, will do quite as much for the morals of a town as anything that could be devised.

“Unlike a church, it will be open every day in the week. It will be a counter attraction to the street and the saloon, and if there is a circulating library as well as a reading-room, it will serve to stimulate and open a larger life to every one who takes a book from it. The home missionary shall not be lacking, but she shall appear under the guise of a librarian instead of a preacher.

“In regions where there is a large proportion of foreigners, there shall be books and periodicals in their native tongues. Few who have not looked into the matter realize the terrible mental strain to the mind of the immigrant from the disruption of old associations and the necessity, in middle life, of adapting himself to utterly new conditions, in a land where his language is unspoken. Many succumb to this, and the statistics of the numbers of

OUR FOREIGN-BORN INSANE

are startling.

“The same is true of the insanity caused among herders’ and farmers’ wives by their dreary, isolated lives on the treeless plains. We commonly think of people living close to nature and absorbed in simple daily tasks as being exceptionally healthy and placid. But a visit to our hospitals for the insane will tell a different story. The lonely woman, with no outlook but the prairie’s level floor, to whom a new book, a new picture, a new idea never comes, is, as statistics show, as much in danger of losing her mind as the man on Wall Street whose life is a fever of excitement.

“Now, to these tired, lonely women, to the young girls who as soon as they are well into their teens begin to think of marrying and abandoning all study, to the young men so eager to make money that self-culture is counted an unnecessary luxury, to the boys who spend their evenings listening to the vulgar talk of the teamsters at the corner grocery, to the ministers and teachers who find that their scant salaries permit of none of the new books and papers which are essential to their mental life,—to all these people I should like to give the blessing of books.

“The offer of a ‘St. Nicholas’ or ‘Youth’s Companion,’ from a pleasant librarian, will be quite as effectual to keep a boy off the street of an evening as an invitation from a home missionary to go to a prayer-meeting. And to the man who may never enter the building, the sight, as he passes to his work every day, of a beautiful little temple devoted tothe things of thought, will serve all unconsciously to make life seem a little cleaner and sweeter and more dignified than it would be without it.

“Now as to the details of this. In the first place, I propose to help only those who are willing to help themselves. That is my principle of work in most matters.

“This is not a new scheme of mine. I have thought of it for years, but it was until recently only a dream of which there was no prospect of realization. Now, however, I have taken steps, which, whether I live or die, will scatter all over the states and territories west of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio little centres of learning, which will reach far more people, and, I must again repeat, do far more good than any other way possible.

“I have appointed two gentlemen, and they are to select three other trustees, two of whom are to be ladies, who will act with them conjointly in the management of the fund. I shall leave them largely to choose their own methods of work, but I have made some stipulations in regard to the disposal of the amount.

“No sum whatever is to be given unconditionally. Except for special reasons, no amount shall ever be given for the establishment of a library or reading-room which shall be less than fifty or more than ten thousand dollars, and the amount given must in every case be

DUPLICATED BY THE RECIPIENTS.

“That is to say, if a little rural community of five hundred people out in Nebraska is able to raise one hundred dollars as a nucleus for a reading-room, I will give an equal amount. Some room over a store, perhaps, or in the church vestry, will be rented. It will be fitted up with chairs, tables, and lamps, which may be contributed by individuals independently of the fund. Then the remainder may be spent in periodicals and a few reference books, to be selected by a committee appointed by the town and by the agent whom I shall employ to look after all details of the work.

“I have already engaged a dozen persons, New England teachers chiefly, women whom I know, whose good sense and executive ability are to be trusted, and I have apportioned out the localities in which they are to work. The first duty of each one will be to put herself in communication with the state superintendent of education, and to receive his indorsement. Then she will make the announcement in all the leading papers of the state or territory, that she is the trustees’ accredited representative, and is authorized to make such arrangements as may be deemed fitting for the establishment of free reading-rooms and libraries in every township. Getting a list of such towns as have no provision of this kind for books and reading, she will proceed to communicate, either by letter or by personal interviews, with the clergymen, mayors,and leading men of the town, and, where any apathy in the matter exists, will endeavor to arouse interest and stimulate them to raise a fund.

“Wherever there is an interest and a desire to take immediate advantage of my proposal by erecting a building, the agent will join with the town in deciding on the plan of construction, and in the selection of a lot, insisting always that it shall be ample enough to allow of the addition of more rooms to the building as the town grows.

“All the details of the arrangements will be submitted to the head committee in New York, thereby insuring the consideration of many matters essential to the success of the scheme, which might be overlooked by the average selectman, more skilled in raising grain and killing hogs than in the science of library construction.

“Of course all this will require tact as well as business-like habits on the part of the agent, but I can rely on those I have engaged for these qualities, and I will risk their success anywhere. I shall urge them to encourage, wherever they can, the erection of a small hall in connection with the library building, which may serve for lectures and meetings, and by pleasant, dignified surroundings give a tone to the character of the proceedings held in it, which might not be obtained elsewhere.

“I shall insist on making the buildings as fireproof and as beautiful as the money will allow. I want to make the Library the most attractive place in town.

“In farming communities, where houses are few and far between, and an hour an evening at a central reading-room would be an impossibility, I shall suggest a circulation of periodicals after the fashion of our Eastern book clubs.

“One great demand which will be made on us, and which we are not yet ready to supply, is for good librarians. I wish to call the attention of intelligent young women to this field of work which is about to be opened to them, provided that they are fitted for it.

“In these new libraries, I propose to provide the librarian at my own expense for the first two years, thereby insuring the judicious management and consequent popularity of the scheme.

“A librarian who has the missionary spirit can have, in a small town, about as christianizing an influence as a home missionary. She will make the library a pleasant place, where quietness and good manners are the rule, and every one is made to feel at home; she will offer wise suggestions as to the selection of books, and give occasional talks on authors and good literature.

“I mean to send out strong, earnest, college-bred young women, who will take a missionary view of their work, and make it a means of great good. I shall pay them well, and, as their terms expire, shall transfer them from one place to another to do pioneer work, varying their salary according to the amount of work done.

“My reason for choosing women for the workis, that I think them to be more faithful and conscientious than men, as a rule, and to have more tact and knowledge of detail. Besides, there are more capable women than men who would be benefited by the money and experience.

“I am especially interested in the success of my scheme in the South, where a circulating library, open to every one without distinction of race or sex, is an almost if not quite an unheard-of thing.

“The scarcity of reading matter among both colored and white teachers, to say nothing of other people, is something fairly startling, and my agents in the Southern states will probably be compelled to adopt somewhat different measures from those used in the West.

“A circulation of magazines and papers will be necessary in sparsely settled districts, where people would otherwise have to walk two or three miles to get any benefit from a reading-room.

“Suppose, for instance, there is a little community of fifty families, both black and white, whose cabins and clearings are scattered over an area five miles square. There are hundreds of such places in the South where the people are completely out of the world, and where not one adult in five sees a weekly paper regularly or could read it if he saw it. To these people, up on the mountain sides, in the pine forests or on the river-bottoms, my

BRAVE NEW ENGLAND TEACHER

will go. She will call them together and have ameeting. She will get them to pledge, say fifty dollars a year, and to this she will add another fifty. Half of this, perhaps, will go for periodicals, chiefly illustrated weeklies and magazines, and the remainder will be paid to some of the more enterprising who can read, and who will agree to hold neighborhood meetings weekly. The blacks will be with the blacks, and the whites with the whites, probably, and the reading matter will be read aloud for the benefit of all.

“Some responsible committee will take charge of the reception, distribution, and preservation of the papers and magazines, and at the end of the year they will, perhaps, be sold at auction among the contributors to the fund.

“If the reading matter were given outright there would be some chance against the success of the plan. People care little for what costs them nothing. But having had to sacrifice something to bring it about they will think it worth something.”

“What would you do, Miss Brewster,” the writer inquired, “in towns where reading-rooms were open to both whites and negroes? Have you any idea that the whites would tolerate being brought into contact with blacks on a par in a public reading-room?”

“Probably not,” replied Miss Brewster; “for racial animosity is still pretty strong in most sections, I imagine. But the difficulty could be

EASILY OBVIATED

by allowing certain days or certain hours for one race and other days or hours for the other race, so that all could be benefited without setting prejudices too much at defiance.”

At this juncture, Miss Brewster’s carriage being announced, the extremely interesting interview was terminated.

Buggsville, Mo.

Dear Friend: The trustees told me that they thought you would be glad to receive a letter from me, telling you something about my experiences in addition to the official report, a copy of which they will forward.

Buggsville, as you already know, is the first town to put up a library building with aid from the Western and Southern Library Fund. Therefore I naturally feel considerable pride and interest in this, the first-fruits of my labors, so far as the erection of a building is concerned.

I will say, by the way, however, that I have been very successful in starting reading-rooms in the little villages, sixty-eight little towns already having them well equipped and beginning to produce a marked result.

Three months ago we started a reading-room at Onetumka, ten miles from here. The people were a rough, ignorant set, for the most part. A good many foreigners are there, and a number of landspeculators and some mill hands, for they have a good water-power, and are already beginning to do a little manufacturing.

It was really one of the most hopeless places I have ever seen. The bad element had got the upper hand from the first. There were five saloons, and several low dance-halls and pool-rooms. There was no resident minister, and they had preaching only once in two weeks by an overworked Baptist preacher with much goodwill and little tact in managing so difficult a community.

I always make it a point to get the ministers to help me first of all, but here it was useless. So I appealed to the school-teacher, the doctor, and the mill-owner. The latter took little interest, although I assured him that anything that could entice his workmen from the saloon would make them serve him better.

The little school-mistress talked to her children about it, but with no success; the doctor was indifferent, and, as I had a more promising field elsewhere, I stayed in the town only a few days.

But presently the county papers began to be full of the library business, and I was asked to speak here and there in the little schoolhouses and churches. At first I trembled at facing an audience of one or two hundred, but I had not been a schoolma’am for nothing, and I soon got over that, at last finding myself no more afraid of them than of my fifty boys and girls in the old school-room at home.

I found that this was the best way to arouse interest. I gave them a practical talk, told them about book clubs, Chatauqua circles and other things, and suggested ways and means of raising money. Most of them live pretty comfortably, but money is scarce, and I find that most of the farms are mortgaged. Generally, however, I found some degree of enthusiasm, especially among the women, when they learned that after the first month it could be so arranged that the magazines might be taken from the reading-room and circulated.

You can’t imagine how many times I have heard some tired farmer’s wife say, often with tears in her eyes, “Miss Martyn, this’ll be a godsend to me. I never get time to go anywhere, or to sit down and read a book; but if I could have that ‘St. Nicholas’ or ‘Wide Awake’ for the children, or just sit down once in a while and read an article, or simply look at those beautiful pictures in ‘Harper’s’ and ‘The Century,’ I feel as though I shouldn’t get so discouraged with the work.”

“Sometimes I feel as if I was forgetting all I ever knew, and the children are growing up so rough and don’t know about any other kind of life,” they will say, in a troubled way, and I feel sorry enough for them. In many cases these women before coming west have had good educations, and this monotonous life, in which there is so little mental stimulus, is terribly hard for them to bear.

Well, after a while, Onetumka heard what theother towns near by were doing, and one or two of the mill hands wrote me that they had been around collecting money and had secured fifty dollars, beside gaining the free use of a suitable room. So I went there and succeeded in raising the sum to seventy-five dollars, to which I added as much more. Then I managed to get the selection of the periodicals myself, and excluded the “Police Gazette” and some others that had been asked for. As there is a large number of Germans here, I subscribed for several German publications; also for a generous list of illustrated papers of a harmless sort, knowing that “Puck” and “Life” would be better appreciated than the “Fortnightly” or the “Contemporary.” Then I saw that a committee was appointed to provide voluntary service in looking after the room and circulating the magazines. I arranged that the reading-room should be open and some one in attendance on Sunday afternoon and evening, as that is the time when the men have a little leisure and the saloons do a great business.

In no place has there been so marked a result as in Onetumka. A record is kept of the attendance, and it has averaged seventy-five every day.

“The reading-room is really a means of grace,” the minister writes. I myself am aware of that, and shall not fail to keep them stimulated until they have a good library.

I started a reading-room at Buggsville during my first six weeks in the state. Here I found goodground for work. Most of the people were ambitious, and some of the young ladies had formed a Chatauqua circle, the only one that I have found thus far.

There were three little feeble churches, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist, each having about half a congregation, and each unable by itself to support a minister decently. They were willing to make sacrifices for the library, however. I suggested that while waiting for the new building they should make use of the vestry of the Methodist church. This is a large and well-lighted room, and at a slight expense for shelves could accommodate as many books as we could buy, and also serve excellently for a reading-room. I found, however, that this aroused a good deal of sectarian feeling and would not do. The Presbyterians and Baptists said that if their children should get accustomed to going there during the week they would want to go there on Sunday, and their own Sunday-schools would dwindle. In order to leave their vestry to be used solely as a reading-room, I suggested that the Methodist Sunday-school should meet at the Baptist church, holding its session at an hour when the two Sunday-schools should not conflict. But this, I discovered, was even worse in the minds of these would-be Christians, who were so afraid of each other, and I found that I was sowing discord instead of harmony.

At this juncture, fearing to lose all help from me if they did not bestir themselves, one man gavea lot 100 × 200 feet, on condition that a building should be put up within a year; another who owned a quarry offered stone for the building; the town voted to give one thousand dollars, and the young people, thus encouraged, set to work earnestly, and by fairs and entertainments added considerably more. I cheered them on with the inspiriting assurance that every cent they earned meant two for the library. The enthusiasm and good spirit, when they got fairly at work, were marvelous, and the people were drawn together in a way to make them forget their differences in their zeal for the common good.

I found a good deal of strong opposition to having the building open on Sunday. I had asked that the reading-room might be open on Sunday afternoons when there was no church service, knowing that this would prevent a good deal of lounging on street corners, and, moreover, subdue much disorder among a set of restless street youth who are fast becoming a terror to the town; but after a great deal of discussion and hot blood over the matter, the conservatives won the day.

Yesterday the building was dedicated, and I was requested to give one of the eight addresses on the great occasion. The whole town turned out, and it was a gala day. The stores were closed, and after a grand procession, led by a German band hired from a neighboring town for the celebration, we proceeded to the library, which is really the most beautiful building in Buggsville.

Every one felt a pride and personal interest in it, from the two solid men of the town who had given the land and the stone, and were consequently the heroes of the day, down to the small boys and girls who had all given their coppers. I felt that every one in town was my friend, and as I rode in state in the procession in a mud-bespattered buggy, the boys cheered, the bells rang, and I think every one felt that a new era had begun. The farmers’ boys and their “best girls” came in from all the country around, and I can’t describe to you all the droll and pathetic sights I saw.

I gave them a little talk on “Books and how to use them,” as short and as sensible as I could make it. At its close a white-haired old man, whom I had never seen before, came and took me by the hand, and said in a simple, childlike way: “Miss Martyn, I want to ask you to tell that rich young lady who has made this thing possible for us here to-day that the blessing of an old man rests upon her.

“I was born down in Maine, and never had much schooling. I came to this part of the country fifty-five years ago. My folks were killed by the Indians. It was mighty different here fifty-five years ago, I can tell you, Miss Martyn; there were Indians all about then, and wolves too. We had taken up government land, and after the old folks were killed I kept on the place as long as I could stand it, for the Indians had by that time been driven off, and there was no more danger. Itwas awful lonesome, though. There wasn’t a soul within twelve miles to speak to. Sometimes I thought I should go insane from lonesomeness.

“I had only two books,—my mother’s little Testament, and another book: perhaps you’ve heard of it: ’twas ‘Locke on the Human Understanding.’ Well, I’d always been fond of books. Somehow I never took to farming, and sometimes I felt as if I’d give every acre I had for a new book, or a newspaper that would tell me what was going on in the world; something that would give me new thoughts; I was so tired of thinking the old ones over and over.

“The fellows who were my nearest neighbors weren’t my kind; they hadn’t any books, and, if you’ll believe it, I’ve ridden many a time fifty miles to get a newspaper a week old.

“Well, at last I couldn’t stand it any longer. I was ashamed to ask any woman to be my wife, and to come out and live in my dreary log cabin, even if I’d known any woman to ask, but I didn’t. Unmarried women were scarce in those days. At last I sold all the land for a song,—I should have been rich now if I’d only kept it,—and I moved a little nearer folks.

“I knew my Bible, and at last, though I hadn’t much education, I began to go around preaching. But a home missionary without a salary has not much money or time for books; besides, before the railroad, I couldn’t get books any way if I’d hadmoney, and sometimes I—perhaps you won’t believe it, ma’am, but I’ve actually cried for books, I felt so sort of hungry and starved. I was thirty years old before, to my knowledge, I ever saw a book of poetry. It was Longfellow’s. Well, ma’am, that book—I can’t tell you”—and the old man’s blue eyes filled with tears and his voice choked.

His simple, genuine feeling was so sweet and so unexpected that it fairly thrilled me. I think I never realized in my life before what mental starvation must be to a sensitive spirit. When I took him by the hand and led him around to see all the books nicely covered and numbered on the shelves, he could only smile through his tears, and touching them almost reverently, say, “Thank the Lord! I never expected to live to see so many books. Thank the Lord!”

I inquired afterwards who he was, but no one knew; they said he was a stranger who had come there simply for the day. I am sorry to have lost sight of him; he was a rare soul, I am sure.

I did the best I could with the money that you sent as a special gift for the first library. I sent to Houghton, Mifflin & Co., and bought their large lithographs of the American poets, and had them nicely framed in narrow oak frames, and hung around the reading-room, with a little biographical sketch pinned up underneath each one. The rest of the money I spent for a number of unmounted photographs from Soule’s, which I taught the youngpeople here to mount and arrange in home-made frames. No doubt, most of them would have been much better pleased with some cheap chromos, but I thought of what would please them best ten years from now, and planned for that.

They have already projected, at my suggestion, a course of reading in the history of art; and whereas a year ago it would have been impossible to get most of the young people to undertake anything really serious, they now evidently consider it quite the thing. All this greatly encourages me, especially as I see hopeful signs of the good fashion spreading.

This is a long letter, but I know your warm interest in all the details of this work, so I make no apology, and congratulate myself that you will consider it a signal success to have one building all equipped and in running order in eight months from the time when you indorsed the scheme.

Ever yours faithfully,Hannah Martyn.

Ever yours faithfully,

Hannah Martyn.

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