TO that prayer-meeting and Father Hyatt's story of Charlie P., Wheathedge owes its library.

"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 gods 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 class 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 illustrations. 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 Saturday 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 establishing 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 snowball, 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 association. 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 accumulate something of a library. Mr. Wheaton presented us with a full assortment 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............