s as we can find nowhere else outside this new world.
Brother McGlynn, I remember, as we rode together to the funeral of Gen.
Grant, called out some half-dozen times, "God's world for the
workingman!" You did this who were the pioneers of the strong and
steadfast town, and then you said, We must have a free public library,
and pay the bills; we have got our churches started, and our schools,
and our place for town-meeting--the tap-root of the tree of liberty in
New England, a living tree, and no mere liberty-pole, and reaching down
200 years--now we must complete the walls of the city, which standeth
four-square, by a free public library, and so do what men may to
maintain a fair public virtue and intelligence within the lines of
Spencer; these men we employ shall have books to read of every kind any
man ought to read, and the ought shall be large and free and fair; and
so the thing was done.

The thirty years have come and gone; the free public library has done
its noble and beautiful work. It is a new departure we touch to-day in
this ceremony of gift and acceptance. This library will grow always more
worthy the name your friend and neighbor has made for it from this time.
They say that in Scotland once a man sent for his minister and said, "If
I give L20,000 to the church do you think it will be reckoned in my
account when I get through down here?" And the minister said: "I do not
feel sure about that; but it is weel worth the experiment." I do feel
sure about this, and the worth of what you can do, to be placed to your
credit, not yonder but right here in the town of Spencer. There can be
no nobler investment, and but few as noble as this you have made these
thirty years for all who have the hunger and thirst in them good books
can satisfy; while still with poor Oliver in the story, we ask for more;
and they are not dead things, as Milton says, but contain a potency of
life as active as the soul from which they sprang:

"Books are each a world; and those we know
Are a substantial world both pure and good;
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
And books are yours
Within whose silent chambers treasure lies
Preserved from age to age; more precious far
Than that accumulated store of gold
And orient gems, which for a day of need
The Sultans hide deep in ancestral vaults.
These stores of truth you can unloc