COLONEL ANDERSON’S BOOKS
“There were no fine libraries then, but in Allegheny City, where I lived, there was a certain Colonel Anderson, who was well to do and of a philanthropic turn. He announced, about the time I first began to work, that he would be in his library at home, every Saturday, ready to lend books to working boys and men. He had only about four hundred volumes, but I doubt if ever so few books were put to better use. Only he who has longed, as I did for Saturday to come, that the spring of knowledge might be opened anew to him, can understand what Colonel Anderson did for me and others of the boys of Allegheny. Quite a number of them have risen to eminence, and I think their rise can be easily traced to this splendid opportunity.”[[6]]
[6]. It was Colonel Anderson’s kindness that led Carnegie to bestow his wealth so generously for founding libraries, as he is now doing every year.
HIS FIRST GLIMPSE OF PARADISE
“How long did you remain an engine-boy?”
“Not very long,” Mr. Carnegie replied; “perhaps a year.”
“And then?”
“I entered a telegraph office as a messenger boy.”
Although Mr. Carnegie did not dwell much on this period, he once described it at a dinner given in honor of the American Consul at Dunfermline, Scotland, when he said:—
“I awake from a dream that has carried me away back to the days of my boyhood, the day when the little white-haired Scottish laddie, dressed in a blue jacket, walked with his father into the telegraph office in Pittsburg to undergo examination as an applicant for a position as messenger boy.