of our life as citizens of the republic and of our
intelligence and virtue, when they are nobly maintained. They can do no
nobler thing. They are sure of their reward, also, if they want one, in
the grateful remembrance of their towns and cities, and open the way for
others again who wonder what they can do to the finest purpose; men who
have made their fortune and have not been struck by what we may call the
greenback paralysis, through which the hand that gets takes all the
strength from the hand that gives. What can we do better, they will say
in such a case, than this Richard Sugden has done for Spencer, and many
another man far and wide?--see to it that our town also shall have a
public library, which shall be its pride and joy, and make perfect so
far as we can the defence from ignorance and vice and crime; open a
fountain from which the waters of life may flow forever for those who
thirst for knowledge or whatever good books can give them? And, as I
have had to notice up among the mountains this summer how I would not
feel thirsty till I came to a clear, cool spring, but then would drink
to my heart's content, so such fountains as these will also create the
thirst they can so nobly allay, while still we keep on drinking in
answer to their perpetual invitation, as the years come and go.

And now shall I tell you a very simple story touching my own life,
which will help to make good my thought of the worth of this you are
doing in Spencer through your free public library, and have been doing,
as I understand, these 30 years, which is in itself a great and singular
honor to your town, maintaining a free library and reading-room at your
own proper charges, for which your friend and fellow-citizen has built
this noble edifice, with some such feeling as he had in the old time who
built the temple that the ark of the covenant and the rod which budded
and the sacred books might have an abiding and splendid home. It was my
lot to be born as your friend was and mine, in a poor and small home,
with this thirst in my nature, as far back as I can remember, for
something to read. And I mind very well the first book I ever bought
with my own penny, the delectable history of Whittington and his Cat,
which cast such a spell over my imagination that when I went up Highgate
Hill over London the other summer, and saw the stone on which poor Dick
sat down to hear the bells ringing far below, which lured him back again
to fame and fort