and sociables, and even an occasional dance. It was the center of village
life, the big, low-ceilinged room, its windows curtained with white
muslin, its walls bright with fresh paper and colored pictures, like any
sitting-room in a village home. The firewood was contributed, a load
apiece, by the farmers of the country about, and the oil for the lamps was
the common gift of the three grocery-stores. There was no carpet, but
bright-colored rag rugs lay about on the bare floor, and it was a point of
honor with the Ladies' Aid Society of the church to keep these renewed.

The expense of a librarian's salary was obviated by the expedient of
having no librarian. The ladies of Hillsboro took turns in presiding over
the librarian's table, each one's day coming about once in three weeks.
"Library Day" was as fixed an institution in Hillsboro as "wash day," and
there was not a busy housewife who did not look forward to the long quiet
morning spent in dusting and caring for the worn old books, which were
like the faces of friends to her, familiar from childhood. The afternoon
and evening were more animated, since the library had become a sort of
common meeting-ground. The big, cheerful, sunlighted room full of
grown-ups and children, talking together, even laughing out loud at times,
did not look like any sophisticated idea of a library, for Hillsboro was
as benighted on the subject of the need for silence in a reading-room as
on all other up-to-date library theories. If you were so weak-nerved and
sickly that the noise kept you from reading, you could take your book, go
into Elzaphan Hall's room and shut the door, or you could take your book
and go home, but you could not object to people being sociable.

Elzaphan Hall was the janitor, and the town's only pauper. He was an old
G.A.R. man who had come back from the war minus an arm and a foot, and
otherwise so shattered that steady work was impossible. In order not to
wound him by making him feel that he was dependent on public charity, it
had been at once settled that he should keep the fire going in the
library, scrub the floor, and keep the room clean in return for his food
and lodging. He "boarded round" like the school-teacher, and slept in a
little room off the library. In the course of years he had grown
pathetically and exasperatingly convinced of his own importance, but he
had been there so long that his dictatorial airs and humors were regarded
with the unsurprised tol