As Miss Brewster uttered these words her cheeks glowed, and her whole frame seemed to quiver with the intensity of her feeling. She rose and restlessly paced the floor as she continued: “I have said all this because I want it understood why I intend to devote a large share of my property to sowing all over the West and South the seeds of what I count as best, in the form of FREE READING-ROOMS AND CIRCULATING LIBRARIES. “I have been for some time carefully studying into this subject, and I have learned some facts which are rather startling when one considers the inference which must be drawn from them. “Let me give you a few of these facts,” said Miss Brewster, seating herself at her desk and drawing some papers from a pigeon-hole. “Taking all the libraries which contain more than one thousand volumes, and are absolutely free to every one, I find that in Massachusetts there are two hundred, and in other New England states—and some of the Middle states as well—a number approximating that. But what do I find in the West and South? I find that Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, Montana, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Washington and Dakota territories, and New Mexico, have NOT ONE FREE GENERAL LIBRARY. I find that Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Colorado have but one each; and that Louisiana and Maryland have none outside of the one largest city in each. “Of course what I have said does not imply that there are no libraries in the states referred to. But it does mean that there are but few, and that those few are either subscription libraries or else belong to schools or institutions, and are not open to the general public. “How is this all to be explained? Is it sufficient to say that the West is young and that the South is poor and sparsely settled? The West is young, indeed, but not too young to have magnificent opera houses, hundreds of millionaires’ palaces, and, in many of the new cities, richer clothes for every one and more of them than the average New Englander thinks he can afford. “The South is poor, very poor, and very sparsely settled compared with the North. But the fact that in those Southern states which I have mentioned there is not one free library open to all, such as one may find in scores of little villages in the North, is not due entirely to poverty. “Even New York State, with her superior wealth and population, and with an aggregate number of all kinds of libraries nearly as great as that of Massachusetts, has NO MORE THAN THIRTY which are absolutely free and general as compared with the two hundred such in Massachusetts. And Pennsylvania, with all her wealth and numbers, shows no more than ten such libraries.