p 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:

To Colonel James Anderson, Founder of Free Libraries in
Western Pennsylvania. He opened his Library to working boys
and upon Saturday afternoons acted as librarian, thus
dedicating not only his books but himself to the noble work.
This monument is erected in grateful remembrance by Andrew
Carnegie, one of the "working boys" to whom were thus opened
the precious treasures of knowledge and imagination through
which youth may ascend.

[Illustration: COLONEL JAMES ANDERSON]

This is but a slight tribute and gives only a faint idea of the depth
of gratitude which I feel for what he did for me and my companions. It
was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to
which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls
who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it, as
the founding of a public library in a community which is willing to
support it as a municipal institution. I am sure that the future of
those libraries I have been privileged to found will prove the
correctness of this opinion. For if one boy in each library district,
by having access to one of these libraries, is half as much benefited
as I was by having access to Colonel Anderson's four hundred well-worn
volumes, I shall consider they have not been established in vain.

"As the twig is bent the tree's inclined." The treasures of the world
which books contain were opened to me at the right moment. The
fundamental advantage of a library is that it gives nothing for
nothing. Youths must acquire knowledge themselves. There is no escape
from this. It gave me great satisfaction to discover, many years
later, that my father was one of the five weavers in Dunfermline who
gathered together the few books they had and formed the first
circulating library in that town.

The history of that library is interesting. It grew, and was removed
no less than seven times from place to place, the first move being
made by the founders, who carried the books in their aprons and two
coal scuttles from the hand-loom shop to the second resting-place.
That my fa