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year when country roads — even the best — are liable to be 

 muddy and not comfortable for ordinary locomotion. 



Besides the economical uses of these cars, they will 

 facilitate the enjoyment of another institution in which 

 Massachusetts stands in the van — the public library 

 system. 



" Of making many books there is no end," but the 

 Public Library is one of the marvels of the nineteenth 

 century. Public schools and newspapers have made 

 readers of all, but no individual can expect to own, or if 

 he did own, could furnish shelf-room for, all the books he 

 may desire to read. The Public Library selects, houses, 

 cares for, and distributes the printed treasures of the 

 thought of the world in every town to every family. 



As many books are accessible to the village maiden to- 

 day, as the scholars of the universities had at their com- 

 mand a few years ago. 



Yes ! Thoreau was right. It was fortunate for us that 

 our fathers made their landfall upon this coast of sand- 

 bars and rocky headlands — upon this land of marsh and 

 wooded hillside — this region with frost enough in the 

 atmosphere to make man work for his bread with muscle 

 and brain — this land now teeming with folk-lore of a plain 

 God-fearing yeomanry — this favored home of the free 

 common school and the free public library. 



They found here a soil that with industry would reward 

 labor, — they found a land full of noble trees and charm- 

 ing wild flowers — they built homely houses, which they 

 have bequeathed to us with their records of well spent 

 and often heroic lives. 



