was an informal history
club, consisting of the postmaster, the doctor, and the druggist, who bore
down heavily on history books. The school-teacher, the minister, and the
priest had each, ex officio, the choice of ten books with nobody to
object, and the children in school were allowed another ten with no advice
from elders.

It would have made a scientific librarian faint, the Hillsboro system, but
the result was that not a book was bought which did not find readers eager
to welcome it. A stranger would have turned dizzy trying to find his way
about, but there are no strangers in Hillsboro. The arrival even of a new
French-Canadian lumberman is a subject of endless discussion.

It can be imagined, therefore, how electrified was the village by the
apparition, on a bright June day, of an automobile creaking and wheezing
its slow way to the old tavern. The irritated elderly gentleman who
stepped out and began blaming the chauffeur for the delay announced
himself to Zadok Foster, the tavern-keeper, as Josiah Camden, of Chicago,
and was electrified in his turn by the calmness with which that mighty
name was received.

During the two days he waited in Hillsboro for the repair of his machine
he amused himself first by making sure of the incredible fact that nobody
in the village had ever heard of him, and second by learning with an
astounded and insatiable curiosity all the details of life in this
forgotten corner of the mountains. It was newer and stranger to him than
anything he had seen during his celebrated motor-car trip through the
Soudan. He was stricken speechless by hearing that you could rent a whole
house (of only five rooms, to be sure) and a garden for thirty-six dollars
a year, and that the wealthiest man in the place was supposed to have
inherited and accumulated the vast sum of ten thousand dollars. When he
heard of the public library he inquired quickly how much it cost to run
_that_? Mr. Camden knew from experience something about the cost of public
libraries.

"Not a cent," said Zadok Foster proudly.

Mr. Camden came from Chicago and not from Missouri, but the involuntary
exclamation of amazed incredulity which burst from his lips was, "Show
_me_!"

So they showed him. The denizen of the great world entered the poor,
low-ceilinged room, looked around at the dreadful chromos on the walls, at
the cheap, darned muslin curtains, at the gaudy rag rugs, at the shabby,
worn books in inextricable confusion