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 tolerance granted to things of long standing, and were forgiven in view of his devotion to the best interests of the library, which took the place of a family to him.

As for the expenses of cataloguing, no one ever thought of such a thing.  Catalogue the books?  Why, as soon hang up a list of the family so that you wouldn’t forget how many children you had; as soon draw a plan of the village so that people should not lose their way about.  Everybody knew what and where the books were, as well as they knew what and where the fields on their farms were, or where the dishes were on the pantry shelves.  The money from the entertainment was in hand by the middle of February; by April the new books, usually about a hundred in number, had arrived; and by June any wide-awake, intelligent resident of Hillsboro would have been ashamed to confess that he did not know the location of every one.

The system of placing on the shelves was simplicity itself.  Each year’s new acquisitions were kept together, regardless of subject, and located by the name of the entertainment which had bought them.  Thus, if you wished to consult a certain book on geology, in which subject the library was rich, owing to the scientific tastes of Squire Pritchett, you were told by the librarian for the day, as she looked up from her darning with a friendly smile, that it was in the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin section.”  The Shakespeare set, honorably worn and dog’s-eared, dated back to the unnamed mass coming from early days before things were so well systematized, and was said to be in the “Old Times section”; whereas Ibsen (for some of Hillsboro young people go away to college) was bright and fresh in the “East Lynne section.”

The books were a visible and sincere symbol of Hillsboro’s past and present.  The honest, unpretending people had bought the books they wished to read, and everyone’s taste was represented, even a few French legends and pious tales being present as a concession to the Roman Catholic element among the French Canadians.  There was a great deal of E.P.  Roe, there was all of Mrs. Southworth—­is it possible that anywhere else in the world there is a complete collection of that lady’s voluminous productions?—­but beside them stood the Elizabethan dramatists and a translation of Dante.  The men of the town, who after they were grown up did not care much for fiction, cast their votes for scientific treatises on agriculture, forestry, and the like; and there 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.