them had been gifts to the children from "summer boarders," but the
majority had been chosen and purchased by their parents.

"We hunt up the names of good books for children in the book review
departments of the magazines," the mother said.

When I asked what magazines, she mentioned three. Two she and her
husband "took"; the other she borrowed monthly from a neighbor, on an
"exchange" basis.

No other children in that region were so abundantly supplied with books;
but all whom I met liked to read. Their parents, in most cases unable to
give them numerous books, had, in almost every instance, taught them to
love reading.

One boy with whom I became friends had a birthday while I was in the
neighborhood. I had heard him express a longing to read "The Lays of
Ancient Rome," which neither he nor any other child in the vicinity
possessed, so I presented him with a copy of it.

"Would you mind if I gave it to the library?" he asked. "Then the other
children around could read it, too."

"The library!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, I don't mean the one down in the village," he hastened to explain.
"I mean the one here, near us. Haven't you been to it?"

When he found that I had not, he offered to go with me to see it. It
turned out to be a "lean-to" in a farmhouse that was in a rather central
position with relation to the surrounding farms. The library consisted
of about two hundred volumes. The librarian was an elderly woman who
lived in the house. One was allowed, she told me, to take out as many
books as one wished, and to keep them until one had finished reading
them.

"Do you want to take out any?" she inquired.

After examining the four or five shelves that comprised the library, I
wanted to take out at least fifty. The books, especially the "juvenile
books," were those of a former generation. Foremost among them were the
"Rollo Books," "Sandford and Merton," Mary Howitt's "Story-Book," and
"The Parents' Assistant."

"Who selected the books?" I asked.

"Nobody exactly _selected_ them," the librarian said. "Every one around
here gave a few from their collections, so's we could have a near-to
library--principally on account of the children. I live most convenient
to every one hereabouts; so I had shelves put up in my lean-to for
them."

News travels very rapidly indeed in the country. My boy friend told some
of the other children that I was reading the _oldest_ books in the
library. "She takes them out by the armfu