Catalogue of books in English in the library of the Society relating to New Mexico and the Southwest. January, 1910

With this little fund we began. The books were imported. The library was opened one day in the week for lending them to subscribers, on their promissory notes to pay double the value if not duly returned. The institution soon manifested its utility, was imitated by other towns, and in other provinces. The libraries were augmented by donations, reading became fashionable; and our people having no public amusements to divert their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in a few years were observed by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries. When we were about to sign the above-mentioned articles, which were to be binding on us, our heirs, &c., for fifty years, Mr. Brockden, the scrivener, said to us, БЂњYou are young men, but it is scarcely probable that any of you will live to see the expiration of the term fixed in the instrument.БЂ«A number of us, however, are yet living; but the instrument was after a few years rendered null, by a charter that incorporated and gave perpetuity to the company.[29] The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting oneБЂ™s self as the proposer of any useful project that might be supposed to raise oneБЂ™s reputation in the smallest degree above that of oneБЂ™s neighbours, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project ...»