closed, and on these nights it was seldom that I reached home before
eleven o'clock. On the alternating nights we were relieved at six.
This did not leave much time for self-improvement, nor did the wants
of the family leave any money to spend on books. There came, however,
like a blessing from above, a means by which the treasures of
literature were unfolded to me.

Colonel James Anderson--I bless his name as I write--announced that he
would open his library of four hundred volumes to boys, so that any
young man could take out, each Saturday afternoon, a book which could
be exchanged for another on the succeeding Saturday. My friend, Mr.
Thomas N. Miller, reminded me recently that Colonel Anderson's books
were first opened to "working boys," and the question arose whether
messenger boys, clerks, and others, who did not work with their hands,
were entitled to books. My first communication to the press was a
note, written to the "Pittsburgh Dispatch," urging that we should not
be excluded; that although we did not now work with our hands, some of
us had done so, and that we were really working boys.[15] Dear Colonel
Anderson promptly enlarged the classification. So my first appearance
as a public writer was a success.

[Footnote 15: The note was signed "Working Boy." The librarian
responded in the columns of the _Dispatch_ defending the rules, which
he claimed meant that "a Working Boy should have a trade." Carnegie's
rejoinder was signed "A Working Boy, though without a Trade," and a
day or two thereafter the _Dispatch_ had an item on its editorial page
which read: "Will 'a Working Boy without a Trade' please call at this
office." (David Homer Bates in _Century Magazine_, July, 1908.)]

My dear friend, Tom Miller, one of the inner circle, lived near