about,
Where I maie reade, all at my ease, both of the New and Olde,
For a right good Booke, whereon to looke, was better to me than Golde."

And so I touch the story of my own life for some poor evidence of what
good books can do for us and for the worth of what you have been doing
in Spencer all these years, and are made glad to day by this library
building which crowns the good endeavor; a place that will not shame but
will glorify your purpose and hold it to the noblest and best endeavors
you can make in the time to come, for such a shrine will be sure to draw
books to it always, worthy of its beauty and grace, and there will be
other men and women also to follow in the steps of Richard Sugden, and
bring to it costly works and rare and beautiful, worthy to be in the
palaces of kings while still you will see to it that the noble provision
of books for the general reading rests directly as it has done so long
on your own generous care.

You have made this noble boon of good books easy and opulent for the
workingmen of Spencer. When I came to this new world and had not heard
as yet of that library among the green lands, but must have books on any
terms, and the terms were hard, and the good wife watching not the
dollars but the very cents because they must all be saved to furnish the
little home, I can well remember how I bought a book one day for half a
dollar, far too big to smuggle into the cottage, and hid it in the
bushes, watched my chances the next day, and got it in all safe and
sound; and some days after, when she caught me reading, and said, "Where
did you get that book, my dear?" I answered, "Why, I have had it for
some time"; and then she only said, "Indeed!" for she was patient with
me and good; and then, it was in what somebody calls our treacle moon.
The workingmen of Spencer fall on happy times. Here are books easy to
come at as the water you drink and the air you breathe and stores of
them which can never be exhausted. If it had come to pass thirty years
ago that some man delving in your wild hills had struck gold, and all
the eager manhood of New England had gone crazy to delve for gold where
Spencer stands, and had found it in mighty stores, I wonder whether that
would have been such a boon to Spencer and the world as this you have
done--establishing great industries and wholesome and good; beckoning
the working forces from far and wide to come here and take hold with you
on such term