Although every one of the thirty-one types of Beadle books (and doubtless many of the individual items also) will awaken vivid memories in the minds of elder visitors, the dominating influence of the exhibition--especially to those historically inclined--will be the effect which it produces as a whole. The collection is literally saturated with the pioneer spirit of America. It portrays the struggles, exploits, trials, dangers, feats, hardships, and daily lives of the American pioneers from the days of the Puritans to the death of Custer, and breathes the spirit which, for two and a half centuries, shaped the conquest and development of the Continent north of the Rio Grande. It is a literature intensely nationalistic and patriotic in character; obviously designed to stimulate adventure, self-reliance and achievement; to exalt the feats of the pioneer men and women who settled the country; and to recite the conditions under which those early figures lived and did their work. It is in those obvious qualities that the cause of the immense vogue of the Beadle books is to be found during their generation. It was in those attributes, also, that their equally great popular influence lay, and no serious student who seeks to understand the history of this country and many of its present tendencies, can fail to obtain a better understanding of such matters by a study of the collection now on view. It is a clinic in the subject of mass psychology; as valuable to the university professor for its significant historical revelations as it is to the gray-haired man to whom it recalls memories of boyhood. Erastus Beadle, who did so much to perpetuate and glorify in print the deeds of the American pioneers, was born in the village of Pierstown, Otsego County, New York, September 11, 1821. His later interest in the subject of American pioneer life, and his devotion to the cause of recording its annals, is no doubt traceable to his own ancestry and to the experiences of his youth. The grandfather of Erastus was Benjamin Beadle, of Wethersfield, Connecticut, who fought in the Revolution under General John Sullivan and General George Clinton. Four generations of Benjamin Beadle’s ancestors were born in or identified with Salem, Massachusetts, where Samuel Beadle died about 1664. Descendants of Samuel fought in the French and Indian Wars. Benjamin, the Revolutionary soldier, removed to New York in 1796. He traveled by sail-boat from Connecticut to New York City; thence up the Hudson to Lansingburg; and by horses and wagons overland through the wilderness to Otsego County, on Stewart’s Patent, near the present Richfield Springs. This pioneer was married three times, and was the father of twenty-three children. The father of Erastus was named Flavel Beadle, and was a son of Benjamin’s second wife. Flavel Beadle was eight years of age during the journey into the New York wilderness, and was there later married to Polly Tuller, who had come from Massachusetts.