e for a year--to keep faith with
the misguided and hopeful parties who had subscribed--and then quit. To
fill in the time, we printed a book: we printed it like a William Morris
book--printed it just as well as we could. It was cold in the old barn
where we first set up "The Philistine," so I built a little building like
an old English chapel right alongside of my house. There was one basement
and a room upstairs. I wanted it to be comfortable and pretty, and so we
furnished our little shop cozily. We had four girls and three boys
working for us then. The Shop was never locked, and the boys and girls
used to come around evenings. It was really more pleasant than at home.

I brought over a shelf of books from the library. Then I brought the
piano, because the youngsters wanted to dance.

The girls brought flowers and birds, and the boys put up curtains at the
windows. We were having a lot o' fun, with new subscriptions coming in
almost every day, and once in a while an order for a book.

The place got too small when we began to bind books, so we built a wing
on one side; then a wing on the other side. To keep the three carpenters
busy who had been building the wings, I set them to making furniture for
the place. They made the furniture as good as they could--folks came
along and bought it.

The boys picked up field-stones and built a great, splendid fireplace and
chimney at one end of the Shop. The work came out so well that I said,
"Boys, here is a great scheme--these hardheads are splendid building
material." So I advertised we would pay a dollar a load for niggerheads.
The farmers began to haul stones; they hauled more stones, and at last
they had hauled four thousand loads. We bought all the stone in the
dollar limit, bulling the market on boulders.

Three stone buildings have been built, another is in progress, and our
plans are made to build an art-gallery of the same material--the stones
that the builders rejected.

An artist blew in on the way to Nowhere, his baggage a tomato-can. He
thought he would stop over for a day or two--he is with us yet, and three
years have gone by since he came, and now we could not do without him.
Then we have a few Remittance-Men, sent to us from a distance, without
return-tickets. Some of these men were willing to do anything but
work--they offered to run things, to preach, to advise, to make love to
the girls.

We bought them tickets to Chicago, and without violence conducte