Our Village Library.
TO that prayer-meeting and Father Hyatt's story of Charlie P.,
Wheathedge owes its library.
"Mr. Laicus," said Mr. Gear as we came out of the meeting together,
"I hope this temperance movement isn't going to end in a
prayer-meeting. The praying is all very well, but I want to see some
work go along with it."
"Very well," said I, "what do you propose?"
"I don't know," said he. "But I think we might do something. I
believe in the old proverb. The gods help those who help
themselves."
That very week Mr. Mapleson called at my house to express the same
idea. "What can we do to shut up Poole's?" said he. "It's dreadful.
Half our young men spend half their evenings there lounging and
drinking away their time." He proposed half a dozen plans and
abandoned them as fast as he proposed them. He suggested that we
organize a Sons of Temperance, and gave it up because neither of us
believed in secret societies; suggested organizing a Band of Hope in
the Sabbath-school, but withdrew the suggestion on my remarking that
the Sabbath-school would not touch the class that made Poole's bar
the busiest place in town; hinted at trying to get John B. Gough,
but doubted whether he could be obtained. I told him I would think
it over. And the next evening I walked up to Poole's to survey the
ground a little. I found, just as you turn the corner from the Main
street to go up the hill, what I had never noticed before-a sign,
not very legible from old age and dirt, "Free Reading-room." Having
some literary predilections, I went in. A bar-room, with three or
four loungers before the counter, occupied the foreground. In the
rear were two round wooden tables. On one were half a dozen copies
of notorious sensation sheets, one or two with infamous
illustrations. A young lad of sixteen was gloating over the pages of
one of them. The other table was ornamented with a backgammon board
and a greasy pack of cards. The atmosphere of the room was composed
of the commingled fumes of bad liquor, bad tobacco, kerosene oil and
coal gas. It did not take me long to gauge the merits of the free
reading-room. But I inwardly thanked the proprietor for the
suggestion it afforded me.
"A free reading-room," said I to myself; "that is what we want at
Wheathedge."
The same thought had fortunately occurred almost simultaneously to
my friend Mr. Korley, though his reason for desiring its
establishment were quite different from mine. His family spends
every summer at Wheathedge. His wife and daughters found themselves
at a loss how to spend their time. They had nothing to do. They
pestered Mr. Korley to bring them up the last novels. But his mind
was too full of stocks; he always forgot the novels. On Saturday he
went over to Newtown, hearing there was a circulating library there.
He found the sign, but no books. "I had some books once," the
proprietor explained, "but the Wheathedge folks carried them all off
and never returned them." Thus it happened that when the week after
my visit to the free reading-room, I met Mr. Korley on board the
train, he remarked to me, "We ought to have a circulating library at
Wheathedge."
"And a reading-room with it," said I.
"Well, yes," said he. "That's a fact. A good reading-room would be a
capital thing."
"Think of the scores of young men," said I, "that are going down to
ruin there. They have no home, no decent shelter even for a winter's
evening, except the grog-shop."
"I don't care so much about the young men," said Mr. Korley, "as I
do about the middle-aged ones: My Jennie pesters me almost to death
every time I go down, to buy her something to read. Of course I
always forget it. Besides, I would like a place where I could see
the papers and periodicals myself. I would give fifty dollars to see
a good library and reading-room in Wheathedge."
"Very good," said I, "I will put you down for that amount." So I
took out my pocket-book and made a memorandum.
"What! are you taking subscriptions?" asked Mr. Korley.
"Have taken one," said I.
That was the beginning. That night I took a blank book and drew up a
subscription paper. It was very simple. It read as follows:
"We, the undersigned, for the purpose of establishing a library and
reading-room in Wheathedge, subscribe the sums set opposite our
names, and agree that when $500 is subscribed the first subscribers
shall call a meeting of the others to form an organization."
I put Mr. Korley's name down for $50, which started it well. Mr.
Jowett could do no less than Mr. Korley, and Mr. Wheaton no less
than Mr. Jowett; and so, the subscription once started, grew very
rapidly, like a boy's snowball, to adequate proportions. The second
Tuesday in July I was enabled to give notice to all the subcribers
to meet at my house. My parlors were well filled. I had taken pains
to get some lady subscribers, and they were there as well as the
gentlemen. I read to the company the law of the State providing for
the organization of a library association. Resolutions were drawn up
and adopted. Stock was fixed at $5, that everybody might be a
stockholder. The annual dues were made $2, imposed alike on
stockholders and on outsiders. A Board of trustees was elected. And
so our little boat was fairly launched.
We began in a very humble way. The school trustees loaned us during
the summer vacation a couple of recitation-rooms which we converted
into a library and conversation-room. The former we furnished in the
first instance with the popular magazines and two or three of the
daily newspapers. We forthwith began also to accumulate something of
a library. Mr. Wheaton presented us with a full assortment of Patent
Office reports, which will be very valuable for reference if any
body should ever want to refer to them. We also have two shelves
full chiefly of old school-books, which a committee on donations
succeeded in raising in the neighborhood.
But apart from these treasures of knowledge our collection is
eminently readable. Maurice Mapleson is on the library committee,
and Maurice Mapleson is fortunately a very sensible man. "The first
thing," he says, "is to get books that people will read. Valuable
books that they won't read may as well stay on the publishers'
shelves as on ours." So as yet we buy only current literature. We
rarely purchase any book in more than two volumes. We have a good
liberal assortment of modern novels-but they are selected with some
care. We sprinkle in a good proportion of popular history and
popular science. The consequence is our library is used. The books
really circulate. Our conversation-room has proved quite as popular
as the library. It is furnished with chess and checkers. What is
more important it is furnished with young ladies. For the Wheathedge
library knows neither male nor female. And the young men find our
checkers more attractive than Tom Poole's cards. They are ready to
exchange the stale tobacco smoke and bad whiskey of his bar-room for
the fair, fresh faces that make our reading-room so attractive. The
boys, too, as a class are very willing to give up the shameless
pictorial literature of his free reading-room for Harper's and the
Illustrated Christian Weekly. In a word the Wheathedge library
became so universally popular that when the opening of the school
threatened to crowd us out of our quarters, there was no difficulty
in raising the money to build a small house, large enough for our
present and prospective needs. The only objection was Mr. Hardcap.
For Mr. Hardcap does not approve of novels.
This objection came out when I first asked him for a subscription,
payable in work on the new building.
"Do you have novels in your library?" said he.
"Of course," said I.
"Then," said he, "don't come to me for any help. I won't do anything
to encourage the reading of novels."
"You do not approve of novels, then, I judge, Mr. Hardcap?" said I.
"Approve of novels!" said he, energetically. "If I had my way, the
pestiferous things should never come near my house. I totally
condemn them. I don't see how any consistent Christian can suffer
them. They're a pack of lies, anyhow."
"Do you not think," said I, "that we ought to discriminate; that
there are different sorts of novels, and that we ought not to
condemn the good with the bad?"
"I don't believe in no kind of fiction, nohow," said Mr. Hardcap,
emphatically. "What we want is facts, Mr. Laicus-hard facts. That's
what I was brought up on when I was a boy, and that's what I mean to
bring my boys up on."
I thought of Mr. Gradgrind, but said nothing.
"Yes," said Mr. Hardcap, half soliloquizing, "there is Charles
Dickens. He was nothing in the world but a novel writer, and they
buried him in Westminster Cathedral, as though he were a saint; and
preached sermons about him, and glorified him in our religious
papers. Sallie is crazy to get a copy of his works, and even wife
wants to read some of them. But they'll have to go out of my house
to do it, I tell ye. Why, they couldn't make more to do if it was
Bunyan or Milton."
"Bunyan?" said I. "Do you mean the author of Pilgrim's Progress?"
"Yes," said he: "that is a book. Why, it's worth a hundred of your
modern novels."
"How is that?" said I. "Pilgrim's Progress, if I mistake not, is
fiction."
"Oh! well," said .Mr. Hardcap, "that's a very different thing. It
isn't a novel. It's a allegory. That's altogether different."
"What is the difference?" said I.
"Oh! well," said he, "that's altogether different. I suppose it is
fictitious; but then it's altogether different. It's a allegory."
"Now I don't approve," continued Mr. Hardcap, without explaining
himself any further, "of our modern Sunday-school libraries. I have
complained a good deal, but it's no use. Tom brings home a story
book every Sunday. I can't very well say he shan't take any books
out of the library, and I don't want to take him out of
Sunday-school. But I don't like these Sunday-school stories. They
are nothing but little novels anyhow. And they're all lies. I don't
believe in telling stories to teach children. If I had my way, there
wouldn't be but one book in the library. That would be the Bible."
"You could hardly leave in all the Bible," said I. "You would have
to cross out the parable of the prodigal son."
"The parable of the prodigal son!" exclaimed Mr. Hardcap, in
astonishment.
"Yes," said I: "that is, if you did not allow any fiction in your
Sunday reading."
"Oh!" said he, "that's very different. That's not fiction; that's a
parable. That's entirely different. Besides," continued he, "I don't
know what right you have to assume that it is a story at all. I have
no doubt that it is true. Christ says distinctly that a man had two
sons, and one came and asked him for his portion. He tells it all
for a fact, and I think it very dishonoring to him to assume that it
is not. I have no doubt that he knew just such a case."
"And the same thing is true of the parable of the lost sheep, and
the lost piece of money, and the sower, and the merchantman, and the
pearl, and the unfaithful steward?" I asked.
"Yes," said he, "I have no doubt of it."
"Well," said I, "that is at least a new view of Scripture teaching."
"I have no doubt it is the correct one," said he. "I don't believe
there is any fiction in the Bible at all."
"Well," said I, "when you get home you read Jotham's story of the
trees, in the Book of Judges; I think it's about the ninth chapter."
"I will," said he; "but if it's in the Bible I have no doubt it is
true, no doubt whatever."
But in spite of Mr. Hardcap, the Wheathedge library flourished; and
next week our new quarters are to be dedicated to the cause of
literature and temperance by a public meeting. And I am assured by
those that know, that Tom Poole's business was never so poor as it
has been since we started our opposition to his free reading-room.
Miss Moore asked Maurice Mapleson last week to suggest a subject for
an illuminated motto to hang on the wall of the reading-room over
the librarian's desk.
"Overcome evil with good," said he.