Janice Day at Poketown by Helen Beecher Long

Author:Helen Beecher Long [Long, Helen Beecher & Munsey's]
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9780554398747
Publisher: BiblioBazaar, LLC
Published: 2008-08-18T20:32:23.366000+00:00

CHAPTER XVI. “SHOWING” THE ELDER No millionaire library-giver had found Poketown on the map. Or else, the hard-headed and tight-fisted voters of that Green Mountain community were too sharp to allow anybody to foist upon them a granite mausoleum, the upkeep of which would mainly advertise the name of the donor.

The Union Sunday School had a library; but its list of volumes was open to the same objections as are raised to many other institutions of its kind. Nor was a circulating library so much needed in Polktown as a reading and recreation room for the youth of the village.

Aside from her brief talk with Mr. Middler, Janice Day advised with no adult at first as to how the establishment of the needed institution should be brought about.

The girl had studied Marty, if she had had little opportunity of becoming acquainted with other specimens of the genus boy. She knew they were as bridle-shy as wild colts.

The idea of the club-room for reading and games must seem to come from the boys themselves. It must appear that they accepted adult aid perforce, but with the distinct understanding that the room was theirs and that there was not to be too much oversight or control by the supporting members of the institution.

The scheme was not at all original with Janice. The nucleus of many a successful free library and village club has been a similar idea.

“Marty, why don't you and your chums have a place of your own where you can read and play checkers these cold nights? I hear Josiah Pringle has chased you out of his shop again.”

“Ya-as—mean old hunks!”

“But didn't somebody spoil a whole nest of whips for him by pouring liquid glue over the snappers?”

“Well! that was only one feller. An' Pringle put us all out,” complained the boy, but grinning, too.

“You wouldn't have let that boy do such a thing in your own club-room—now, would you?”

“Huh! how'd we ever git a club-room, Janice? We had Poley Haskin's father's barn onc't; but when we tried to heat it with a three-legged cook-stove, Poley's old man put us out in a hurry.”

“Oh, I mean a real nice place,” said the wily Janice. “Not a place to smoke those nasty cigarettes in, and carry on; but a real reading-room, with books, and papers, and games, and all that.”

“Oh, that would be fine! But where'd we get that kind of a place in Poketown?” queried Marty.

That was the start of it.

There was an empty store on High Street next to the drug store. It was a big room which could be easily heated by a pot stove and a few lengths of stovepipe. It was owned by the drug-store man, and had been empty a long time. He asked six dollars a month rent for it.

It was just about this time that Janice learned she possessed powers of persuasive eloquence. The druggist was the first person she “tackled” in her campaign.

“It's a secret, Mr. Massey,” she told him; “but some of the boys want a reading-room, and some of the rest of us are anxious to help them get it.

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