"With this general plan for conducting our literary festival, I will leave the subject with you for consideration at the proper time.
"I feel conscious that under the circumstances, I owe you an apology for having so trespassed upon your patience and good nature, by the length of my remarks. Therefore I desire to acknowledge my thrice doubled appreciation of your manifest interest, attention and sympathy, which have both flattered and encouraged me greatly.
"I will now close by thanking you, through your worthy officers, for this cordial and beautiful reception; also for the opportunity to address you on a subject in which I am so deeply interested."
CHAPTER XXIII.
FORMATION OF POPULAR SCIENCE CLUBS.
As the days passed after the reception, the new books were unpacked by Fillmore Flagg, assisted by George Gerrish. As soon as possible they were arranged and placed on appropriate shelves in each one of the ten rooms prepared for them. Large steel engravings in plain oak frames, of all the authors, together with the maps and charts, all neatly glazed and mounted, adorned the walls of the particular room to which they belonged, adding greatly to the attractiveness of the general collection. As the work progressed, the keen interest displayed by all members of the farm company seemed to increase. They could talk of nothing else; they were eagerly and almost impatiently waiting for the announcement of the formation of the clubs. Accordingly therefore, as soon as the rooms were ready, a complete schedule of the books in each series was made; these schedules being numbered from one to ten, to indicate the series to which they belonged. They were printed and distributed among the members of the company, with a request that one week later, each member should return two of the numbered schedules marked as first and second choice of the studies they desired to take up. By this method of voluntary selection, the clubs were quickly and easily formed, without friction or embarassment. Well stimulated by an ever increasing fund of interest and enthusiastic ambition, the club members, impressed with the wisdom of Fillmore Flagg's advice, promptly took up the class work of the study chosen, eager to secure a generous share of the educational benefits to be dispensed at the board of this great literary feast, to which they had been so kindly invited as especially selected guests. With some misgivings as to the final result, Fillmore Flagg carefully watched the preliminary club work while yet in its organic stage. He had been somewhat doubtful of the ability of the average club member, who was not a trained student, to acquire a sufficient interest in such abstract subjects, with which to develop the mental force so necessary in order to digest and finally master them. However, much to his surprise and delight, at the very threshold of the work, the display of energy, ability and mental acuteness on the part of the entire club membership, dispelled the last remaining doubt from his mind; he was convinced of the practicability and final success of the course.
In carefully analyzing the subject, he perceived that they were quickened by the momentum of a united co-operative effort; also that they were—perhaps subconsciously—pushed forward by a great number of new ideas concerning the desirability of at once acquiring a larger store of scientific lore, as a necessary and more complete equipment for the practical duties of the battle of life. Dominant and central among these ideas, was the one which so temptingly promised an increased knowledge of themselves as individuals, by the mastery of the broad and hitherto unexplored field of explanatory science; which might lead to a better solution of the mystery of environmental conditions. Finally, they were no doubt inspired strongly by a firm conviction that, once armed with a thorough scientific education, they would possess an additional power to aid in making Solaris Farm a speedier and more pronounced success.