As to the reading, there was the library of many volumes at home. There was the Sunday school collection; and its records of one rainy Sunday declare that by some method of persuasion she wheedled the young librarian into allowing her to carry home four books for the afternoon’s consumption. Then, too, in the same building as the school there was a large library, open to the public on payment of one dollar a year, and from this, she might carry home a book every day if she chose. No one interfered with her taking whatever she wished, and she usually wandered about among the bookcases and selected for herself. One day, however, the kindly old librarian heard a child’s voice asking,
“Will you please help me to get a book? I can’t find what I want.”
He peered over the top of his tall desk, and there stood a little girl in short skirts and a blue flannel blouse with brass buttons, looking up at him expectantly.
“Certainly,” he replied, smiling down upon her. “How should you like one of the Rollo books?”
“I’ve read them all, most of them twice, and some of them three times.”
“What kind of book should you like?”
“I’d like a book about the Spanish Inquisition,” she declared serenely.
“What!” exclaimed the good man. “That’s not the kind of book for a little girl to read. What made you think of that?”
“I read ‘The Pit and the Pendulum,’ and it said the story happened in the Spanish Inquisition. I want to know what it is and I want to read some more stories about it.”
The gray-haired librarian was aghast, but by no means unwise. He brought her a book about the Inquisition, a big book, a heavy book, a dismal book, in the finest of print and with two columns to the page. No sensible child would dream of reading such a book, and the shrewd old librarian knew it.