(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 newspapers would 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, and
for 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 this fair
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 to be 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 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 that _there_ is 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 understood why 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. But it 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 communities
preferring 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 the
East, 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 to the 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 work is, 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 a meeting. 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 land speculators 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 the other 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 good ground 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 gave a 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. It was 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 had money, 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 young people 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.