Laicus; Or, the Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish Part 26

"Mr. Laicus," said Mr. Gear as we came out of the meeting together, "I hope this temperance movement isn't going to end in a prayer-meeting. The praying is all very well, but I want to see some work go along with it."

"Very well," said I, "what do you propose?"

"I don't know," said he. "But I think we might do something. I believe in the old proverb. The G.o.ds help those who help themselves."

That very week Mr. Mapleson called at my house to express the same idea. "What can we do to shut up Poole's?" said he. "It's dreadful.

Half our young men spend half their evenings there lounging and drinking away their time." He proposed half a dozen plans and abandoned them as fast as he proposed them. He suggested that we organize a Sons of Temperance, and gave it up because neither of us believed in secret societies; suggested organizing a Band of Hope in the Sabbath-school, but withdrew the suggestion on my remarking that the Sabbath-school would not touch the cla.s.s that made Poole's bar the busiest place in town; hinted at trying to get John B. Gough, but doubted whether he could be obtained. I told him I would think it over. And the next evening I walked up to Poole's to survey the ground a little. I found, just as you turn the corner from the Main street to go up the hill, what I had never noticed before-a sign, not very legible from old age and dirt, "Free Reading-room." Having some literary predilections, I went in. A bar-room, with three or four loungers before the counter, occupied the foreground. In the rear were two round wooden tables. On one were half a dozen copies of notorious sensation sheets, one or two with infamous ill.u.s.trations. A young lad of sixteen was gloating over the pages of one of them. The other table was ornamented with a backgammon board and a greasy pack of cards. The atmosphere of the room was composed of the commingled fumes of bad liquor, bad tobacco, kerosene oil and coal gas. It did not take me long to gauge the merits of the free reading-room. But I inwardly thanked the proprietor for the suggestion it afforded me.

"A free reading-room," said I to myself; "that is what we want at Wheathedge."

The same thought had fortunately occurred almost simultaneously to my friend Mr. Korley, though his reason for desiring its establishment were quite different from mine. His family spends every summer at Wheathedge. His wife and daughters found themselves at a loss how to spend their time. They had nothing to do. They pestered Mr. Korley to bring them up the last novels. But his mind was too full of stocks; he always forgot the novels. On Sat.u.r.day he went over to Newtown, hearing there was a circulating library there.

He found the sign, but no books. "I had some books once," the proprietor explained, "but the Wheathedge folks carried them all off and never returned them." Thus it happened that when the week after my visit to the free reading-room, I met Mr. Korley on board the train, he remarked to me, "We ought to have a circulating library at Wheathedge."

"And a reading-room with it," said I.

"Well, yes," said he. "That's a fact. A good reading-room would be a capital thing."

"Think of the scores of young men," said I, "that are going down to ruin there. They have no home, no decent shelter even for a winter's evening, except the grog-shop."

"I don't care so much about the young men," said Mr. Korley, "as I do about the middle-aged ones: My Jennie pesters me almost to death every time I go down, to buy her something to read. Of course I always forget it. Besides, I would like a place where I could see the papers and periodicals myself. I would give fifty dollars to see a good library and reading-room in Wheathedge."

"Very good," said I, "I will put you down for that amount." So I took out my pocket-book and made a memorandum.

"What! are you taking subscriptions?" asked Mr. Korley.

"Have taken one," said I.

That was the beginning. That night I took a blank book and drew up a subscription paper. It was very simple. It read as follows:

"We, the undersigned, for the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng a library and reading-room in Wheathedge, subscribe the sums set opposite our names, and agree that when $500 is subscribed the first subscribers shall call a meeting of the others to form an organization."

I put Mr. Korley's name down for $50, which started it well. Mr.

Jowett could do no less than Mr. Korley, and Mr. Wheaton no less than Mr. Jowett; and so, the subscription once started, grew very rapidly, like a boy's s...o...b..ll, to adequate proportions. The second Tuesday in July I was enabled to give notice to all the subcribers to meet at my house. My parlors were well filled. I had taken pains to get some lady subscribers, and they were there as well as the gentlemen. I read to the company the law of the State providing for the organization of a library a.s.sociation. Resolutions were drawn up and adopted. Stock was fixed at $5, that everybody might be a stockholder. The annual dues were made $2, imposed alike on stockholders and on outsiders. A Board of trustees was elected. And so our little boat was fairly launched.

We began in a very humble way. The school trustees loaned us during the summer vacation a couple of recitation-rooms which we converted into a library and conversation-room. The former we furnished in the first instance with the popular magazines and two or three of the daily newspapers. We forthwith began also to acc.u.mulate something of a library. Mr. Wheaton presented us with a full a.s.sortment of Patent Office reports, which will be very valuable for reference if any body should ever want to refer to them. We also have two shelves full chiefly of old school-books, which a committee on donations succeeded in raising in the neighborhood.

But apart from these treasures of knowledge our collection is eminently readable. Maurice Mapleson is on the library committee, and Maurice Mapleson is fortunately a very sensible man. "The first thing," he says, "is to get books that people will read. Valuable books that they won't read may as well stay on the publishers'

shelves as on ours." So as yet we buy only current literature. We rarely purchase any book in more than two volumes. We have a good liberal a.s.sortment of modern novels-but they are selected with some care. We sprinkle in a good proportion of popular history and popular science. The consequence is our library is used. The books really circulate. Our conversation-room has proved quite as popular as the library. It is furnished with chess and checkers. What is more important it is furnished with young ladies. For the Wheathedge library knows neither male nor female. And the young men find our checkers more attractive than Tom Poole's cards. They are ready to exchange the stale tobacco smoke and bad whiskey of his bar-room for the fair, fresh faces that make our reading-room so attractive. The boys, too, as a cla.s.s are very willing to give up the shameless pictorial literature of his free reading-room for Harper's and the Ill.u.s.trated Christian Weekly. In a word the Wheathedge library became so universally popular that when the opening of the school threatened to crowd us out of our quarters, there was no difficulty in raising the money to build a small house, large enough for our present and prospective needs. The only objection was Mr. Hardcap.

For Mr. Hardcap does not approve of novels.

This objection came out when I first asked him for a subscription, payable in work on the new building.

"Do you have novels in your library?" said he.

"Of course," said I.

"Then," said he, "don't come to me for any help. I won't do anything to encourage the reading of novels."

"You do not approve of novels, then, I judge, Mr. Hardcap?" said I.

"Approve of novels!" said he, energetically. "If I had my way, the pestiferous things should never come near my house. I totally condemn them. I don't see how any consistent Christian can suffer them. They're a pack of lies, anyhow."

"Do you not think," said I, "that we ought to discriminate; that there are different sorts of novels, and that we ought not to condemn the good with the bad?"

"I don't believe in no kind of fiction, nohow," said Mr. Hardcap, emphatically. "What we want is facts, Mr. Laicus-hard facts. That's what I was brought up on when I was a boy, and that's what I mean to bring my boys up on."

I thought of Mr. Gradgrind, but said nothing.

"Yes," said Mr. Hardcap, half soliloquizing, "there is Charles d.i.c.kens. He was nothing in the world but a novel writer, and they buried him in Westminster Cathedral, as though he were a saint; and preached sermons about him, and glorified him in our religious papers. Sallie is crazy to get a copy of his works, and even wife wants to read some of them. But they'll have to go out of my house to do it, I tell ye. Why, they couldn't make more to do if it was Bunyan or Milton."

"Bunyan?" said I. "Do you mean the author of Pilgrim's Progress?"

"Yes," said he: "that is a book. Why, it's worth a hundred of your modern novels."

"How is that?" said I. "Pilgrim's Progress, if I mistake not, is fiction."

"Oh! well," said .Mr. Hardcap, "that's a very different thing. It isn't a novel. It's a allegory. That's altogether different."

"What is the difference?" said I.

"Oh! well," said he, "that's altogether different. I suppose it is fict.i.tious; but then it's altogether different. It's a allegory."

"Now I don't approve," continued Mr. Hardcap, without explaining himself any further, "of our modern Sunday-school libraries. I have complained a good deal, but it's no use. Tom brings home a story book every Sunday. I can't very well say he shan't take any books out of the library, and I don't want to take him out of Sunday-school. But I don't like these Sunday-school stories. They are nothing but little novels anyhow. And they're all lies. I don't believe in telling stories to teach children. If I had my way, there wouldn't be but one book in the library. That would be the Bible."

"You could hardly leave in all the Bible," said I. "You would have to cross out the parable of the prodigal son."

"The parable of the prodigal son!" exclaimed Mr. Hardcap, in astonishment.

"Yes," said I: "that is, if you did not allow any fiction in your Sunday reading."

"Oh!" said he, "that's very different. That's not fiction; that's a parable. That's entirely different. Besides," continued he, "I don't know what right you have to a.s.sume that it is a story at all. I have no doubt that it is true. Christ says distinctly that a man had two sons, and one came and asked him for his portion. He tells it all for a fact, and I think it very dishonoring to him to a.s.sume that it is not. I have no doubt that he knew just such a case."

"And the same thing is true of the parable of the lost sheep, and the lost piece of money, and the sower, and the merchantman, and the pearl, and the unfaithful steward?" I asked.

"Yes," said he, "I have no doubt of it."

"Well," said I, "that is at least a new view of Scripture teaching."

"I have no doubt it is the correct one," said he. "I don't believe there is any fiction in the Bible at all."

"Well," said I, "when you get home you read Jotham's story of the trees, in the Book of Judges; I think it's about the ninth chapter."

"I will," said he; "but if it's in the Bible I have no doubt it is true, no doubt whatever."

But in spite of Mr. Hardcap, the Wheathedge library flourished; and next week our new quarters are to be dedicated to the cause of literature and temperance by a public meeting. And I am a.s.sured by those that know, that Tom Poole's business was never so poor as it has been since we started our opposition to his free reading-room.

Miss Moore asked Maurice Mapleson last week to suggest a subject for an illuminated motto to hang on the wall of the reading-room over the librarian's desk.