deavor by their touchingly unworldly
ignorance of their limitations. As often happens in such cases they
believed so ingenuously in their own capacities that their faith wrought
miracles.

Sometimes they gave a cantata, sometimes a nigger-minstrel show. The year
the interior of the town hall was changed, they took advantage of the time
before either the first or second floor was laid, and attempted and
achieved an indoor circus. And the year that an orchestra conductor from
Albany had to spend the winter in the mountains for his lungs, they
presented _Il Trovatore_. Everybody sang, as a matter of course, and those
whose best efforts in this direction brought them no glory had their
innings the year it was decided to give a play.

They had done _East Lynne_ and _Hamlet, Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and _Macbeth_,
and every once in a while the local literary man, who was also the
undertaker, wrote a play based on local traditions. Of course they gave
_The Village School_ and _Memory's Garland_, and if you don't remember
those delectable home-made entertainments, so much the worse for you. It
is true that in the allegorical tableau at the end of _Memory's Garland_
the wreath, which was of large artificial roses, had been made of such
generous proportions that when the Muses placed it on the head of slender
Elnathan Pritchett, representing "The Poet," it slipped over his ears,
down over his narrow shoulders, and sliding rapidly toward the floor was
only caught by him in time to hold it in place upon his stomach. That
happened only on the first night, of course. The other performances it was
perfect, lodging on his ears with the greatest precision.

It must not be supposed, however, that the responsibilities of Hillsboro
for the library ended with the triumphant counting out of the money after
the entertainment. This sum, the only actual cash ever handled by the
committee, was exclusively devoted to the purchase of new books. It was
the pride of the village that everything else was cared for without price,
by their own enterprise, public spirit, and ingenuity. When the books, had
overflowed the wing of Deacon Bradlaugh's house, back in 1869, they were
given free lodging in the rooms of the then newly established and
flourishing Post of the G.A.R. In 1896 they burst from this chrysalis into
the whole lower floor of the town hall, newly done over for the purpose.
From their shelves here the books looked down benignly on church suppers