her three villages of the valley who did not
admit that Hillsboro deserved it. Everyone said that in this case
Providence had rewarded true merit, Providence being represented by Mr.
Josiah Camden, king of the Chicago wheat pit, whose carelessly bestowed
bounty meant the happy termination of Hillsboro's long and arduous
struggles.

The memory of man could not go back to the time when that town had not
had a public library. It was the pride of the remote village, lost among
the Green Mountains, that long before Carnegie ever left Scotland there
had been a collection of books free to all in the wing of Deacon
Bradlaugh's house. Then as now the feat was achieved by the united efforts
of all inhabitants. They boasted that the town had never been taxed a cent
to keep up the library, that not a person had contributed a single penny
except of his own free will; and it was true that the public spirit of the
village concentrated itself most harmoniously upon this favorite feature
of their common life. Political strife might rage in the grocery-stores,
religious differences flame high in the vestibule of the church, and
social distinctions embitter the Ladies' Club, but the library was a
neutral ground where all parties met, united by a common and disinterested
effort.

Like all disinterested and generous actions it brought its own reward. The
great social event of the year, not only for Hillsboro, but for all the
outlying towns of Woodville, Greenford, and Windfield, was the annual
"Entertainment for buying new books," as it was named on the handbills
which were welcomed so eagerly by the snow-bound, monotony-ridden
inhabitants of the Necronsett Valley. It usually "ran" three nights so
that every one could get there, the people from over Hemlock Mountain
driving twenty miles. There was no theater for forty miles, and many a
dweller on the Hemlock slopes had never seen a nearer approach to one than
the town hall of Hillsboro on the great nights of the "Library Show."

As for Hillsboro itself, the excitement of one effort was scarcely over
before plans for the next year's were begun. Although the date was fixed
by tradition on the three days after Candlemas (known as "Woodchuck Day"
in the valley), they had often decided what the affair should be and had
begun rehearsals before the leaves had turned in the autumn. There was no
corner of the great world of dramatic art they had not explored, borne up
to the loftiest regions of en