On this little fund we began. The books were imported; the library
wag opened one day in the week for lending to the subscribers,
on their promissory notes to pay double the value if not duly returned.
The institution soon manifested its utility, was imitated by
other towns, and in other provinces. The libraries were augmented
by donations; reading became fashionable; and our people,
having no publick amusements to divert their attention from study,
became better acquainted with books, and in a few years were
observ'd by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent
than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.
When we were about to sign the above-mentioned articles, which were
to be binding upon us, our heirs, etc., for fifty years, Mr. Brockden,
the scrivener, said to us, "You are young men, but it is scarcely
probable that any of you will live to see the expiration of the term
fix'd in the instrument." A number of us, however, are yet living;
but the instrument was after a few years rendered null by a charter
that incorporated and gave perpetuity to the company.
The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions,
made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one's self as the
proposer of any useful project, that might be suppos'd to raise one's
reputation in the smallest degree above that of one's neighbors,
when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project.
I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and stated
it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go
about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading.
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