“Been knocking you again, has he, Dan?” demanded Leslie, frowning.
“Why, it’s getting so bad now,” said the other, angrily, “that a boy can’t ask for a single work of fiction but what Mr. Loft takes occasion to give him a long lecture on wasted opportunities. He says we ought to be cramming intelligence into our brains instead of fooling away our time with such trash as we ask for.”
“He makes me tired,” asserted Leslie. “To his mind everything a boy does that isn’t meant to fill his poor brain with knowledge is wasted. If he had his way I bet you there wouldn’t be a real boy’s book in all the library; and some of them are standard works at that.”
“My father and grandfather read Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, and a lot of other books that every boy with red blood in his veins dotes on,” asserted Dan. “But Mr. Loft told me they ought to be burnt, and that he meant to see if he could influence the town council to allow him to weed out all such pernicious juvenile literature.”
“Then never a boy will be seen in our fine library, you can be sure of that!” asserted Dick, pugnaciously.
“I’ve talked it over with several people besides my folks,” Leslie went on to tell his chums, “and they all think this way. Like Mr. Holwell, they admit that there are lots of books for boys published these days at a cheap price that are written just for the excitement in them. They condemn that class, but at the same time say there are many volumes, and some of ’em cheap at that, that while full of adventure, show a boy how to curb his faults, and climb up the ladder of fame.”
“I could string off two dozen titles right now, every one a dandy book,” asserted Dan, pugnaciously, “all on my shelf at home, and my mother has read every single one of the same. What she says is all right you can depend on isn’t going to do a fellow any harm, for she used to be a teacher in New York City, and knows boys from the ground up.”
“There’s only one thing to be done about it,” asserted Dick. “That is to start a library of our own as we talked about some time ago.”
“You mean inside the Y. M. C. A.?” asked Dan, eagerly.
“Yes, after we consult again with Mr. Holwell about it,” came the answer, showing that Dick had been thinking over the idea since the time it was first mentioned.