Colonel James Anderson—­I bless his name as I write—­announced that he would open his library of four hundred volumes to boys, so that any young man could take out, each Saturday afternoon, a book which could be exchanged for another on the succeeding Saturday.  My friend, Mr. Thomas N. Miller, reminded me recently that Colonel Anderson’s books were first opened to “working boys,” and the question arose whether messenger boys, clerks, and others, who did not work with their hands, were entitled to books.  My first communication to the press was a note, written to the “Pittsburgh Dispatch,” urging that we should not be excluded; that although we did not now work with our hands, some of us had done so, and that we were really working boys.[15] Dear Colonel Anderson promptly enlarged the classification.  So my first appearance as a public writer was a success.

[Footnote 15:  The note was signed “Working Boy.”  The librarian responded in the columns of the Dispatch defending the rules, which he claimed meant that “a Working Boy should have a trade.”  Carnegie’s rejoinder was signed “A Working Boy, though without a Trade,” and a day or two thereafter the Dispatch had an item on its editorial page which read:  “Will ‘a Working Boy without a Trade’ please call at this office.” (David Homer Bates in Century Magazine, July, 1908.)]

My dear friend, Tom Miller, one of the inner circle, lived near Colonel Anderson and introduced me to him, and in this way the windows were opened in the walls of my dungeon through which the light of knowledge streamed in.  Every day’s toil and even the long hours of night service were lightened by the book which I carried about with me and read in the intervals that could be snatched from duty.  And the future was made bright by the thought that when Saturday came a new volume could be obtained.  In this way I became familiar with Macaulay’s essays and his history, and with Bancroft’s “History of the United States,” which I studied with more care than any other book I had then read.  Lamb’s essays were my special delight, but I had at this time no knowledge of the great master of all, Shakespeare, beyond the selected pieces in the school books.  My taste for him I acquired a little later at the old Pittsburgh Theater.

John Phipps, James R. Wilson, Thomas N. Miller, William Cowley—­members of our circle—­shared with me the invaluable privilege of the use of Colonel Anderson’s library.  Books which it would have been impossible for me to obtain elsewhere were, by his wise generosity, placed within my reach; and to him I owe a taste for literature which I would not exchange for all the millions that were ever amassed by man.  Life would be quite intolerable without it.  Nothing contributed so much to keep my companions and myself clear of low fellowship and bad habits as the beneficence of the good Colonel.  Later, when fortune smiled upon me, one of my first duties was the erection of a monument to my benefactor.  It stands in front of the Hall and Library in Diamond Square, which I presented to Allegheny, and bears this inscription: