But, in the second place, in that year 1731, who was Franklin who did all that, and who were the persons who helped to do it? He and they were young men; obscure men, poor men, laboring men; mechanics and tradesmen of the town where they lived; young men just getting a start in the world. So this new era in the brain life of the American people had its beginning with such as they were. Who of us, therefore, however modest be our lot in life, has any right to say to himself, "I am not in position to do anything for the advancement of my race"? Nay; my brother, think of young Ben Franklin, the printer, and his 50 brother mechanics; remember what they accomplished; and do not despair of being useful in your time also. And in the third place, this movement came from those young men associated together in a social debating club. It was their experience in the actual discussion of the problems of human thought which made them feel the need of books and suggested this great measure for popularizing books: a fact which fits in well with Mr. Sage's idea of blending the two things together here; of giving perpetual house-room and hospitality to a debating club, here, in the very midst of this library. And now the fourth point is, that the plan started by Franklin and those other young mechanics in Philadelphia, in 1731, the plan of joint-stock library associations, worked so well there that, as Franklin tells, it was taken up in other provinces. Naturally, the new plan was adopted first in the towns where it was heard of first--the towns nearest to Philadelphia. But before many years, the news of it had travelled far, to the southward and the northward, and whether consciously or unconsciously the model set up in Philadelphia, was imitated, with more or less closeness, in scores of places far away. One curious example springs up in South Carolina. It is in the Georgetown district, then given to the growth of indigo. A number of the planters came together and formed the Winyaw Indigo Society. Their chief business was to have a pleasant time together and talk indigo; they paid their initiation fees in indigo; they paid their annual dues in indigo; and presently they found their treasury so full and overflowing with indigo, that they resolved to devote their surplus in part to the formation of the Indigo Society Library. Then, too, at about the same time in Charleston, seventeen young men, of very limited means, desirous of seeing the best and freshest English magazines, formed a club for that purpose, and started with a fund of ten pounds sterling, not venturing at first to hope to be able to purchase books also. Soon, however, their plan grew and took in books; and from this small beginning arose the great "Library Society" of Charleston, which has ministered to the pleasure and benefit of the people of that place for nearly a century and a half.