For the hand was the first instrument of labor, that distinctive accomplishment by which man finally raised himself above his cousins, the lower animals; and a respect for the work of the hand survives as an instinct in all of us.
The stretch of weeks from June to September, when the schools were closed, would have been hard to fill in had it not been for the public library.

At first I made myself a calendar of the vacation months, and every morning I tore off a day, and comforted myself with the decreasing number of vacation days.

But after I discovered the public library I was not impatient for the reopening of school.

The library did not open till one o'clock in the afternoon, and each reader was allowed to take out only one book at a time.

Long before one o'clock I was to be seen on the library steps, waiting for the door of paradise to open.