When I asked him if there was anything else he had been able to think of to do for the world—­

“No,” he said, “nothing really; nothing except chucking down libraries on it—­safes for old books.”

“And Mr. Morgan?” I said.

“Oh!  He is chucking down old china on it, old pictures, and things.”

“And Mr. Rockefeller?”

“Mussing with colleges, some,” he said, “just now.  But he doesn’t, as a matter of fact, see anything—­not of his own—­that can really be done with them, except to make them more systematized and businesslike, make them over into sort of Standard Oil Spiritual Refineries, fill them with millions more of little Rockefellers—­and they won’t let him do that.  Of course, as you might see, what they want to do practically is to take the Rockefeller money and leave the Rockefeller out.  Nobody will really let him do anything.  Everything goes this way when we seriously try to do things.  The fact is, it is a pretty small, helpless business, owning a world,” sighed Mr. Carnegie.

“This is why we are selling out, if anybody happens along.  Anybody, that is, who really sees what this piece of property is for and how to develop it, can have it,” said Mr. Carnegie, “and have it cheap.”

Mr. Carnegie spoke these last words very slowly and wearily, and with his most wistful look; and then, recalling himself suddenly, and handing me a glass to look at New York with and see what I thought of it, he asked to be excused for a moment, and saying, “I have fourteen libraries to give away before a quarter past twelve,” he hurried out of the room.

CHAPTER II

MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ

I found, as I was studying the general view of New York as seen from the top through Mr. Carnegie’s glass, that there appeared to be a great many dots—­long rows of dots for the most part—­possibly very high buildings, but there was one building, wide and white and low, and more spread-out and important-looking than any of the others, which especially attracted my attention.  It looked as if it might be a kind of monument or mausoleum to somebody.  On looking again I found that it was filled with books, and was the Carnegie Public Library.  There were forty more Libraries for New York Mr. Carnegie was having put up, I was told, and he had dotted them—­thousands of them almost everywhere one could look, apparently, on his own particular part of the planet.

A few days later, when I began to do things at a closer range, I took a little trip to New York, and visited the Library; and I asked the man who seemed to have it in charge, who there was who was writing books for Mr. Carnegie’s Libraries just now, or if there was any really adequate arrangement Mr. Carnegie had made for having a few great books written for all these fine buildings—­all these really noble book-racks, he had had put up.  The man seemed