FullReads

I brought over a shelf of books from the library. Then I brought the piano, because the youngsters wanted to dance.

The girls brought flowers and birds, and the boys put up curtains at the windows. We were having a lot o’ fun, with new subscriptions coming in almost every day, and once in a while an order for a book.

The place got too small when we began to bind books, so we built a wing on one side; then a wing on the other side. To keep the three carpenters busy who had been building the wings, I set them to making furniture for the place. They made the furniture as good as they could–folks came along and bought it.

The boys picked up field-stones and built a great, splendid fireplace and chimney at one end of the Shop. The work came out so well that I said, “Boys, here is a great scheme–these hardheads are splendid building material.” So I advertised we would pay a dollar a load for niggerheads. The farmers began to haul stones; they hauled more stones, and at last they had hauled four thousand loads. We bought all the stone in the dollar limit, bulling the market on boulders.

Three stone buildings have been built, another is in progress, and our plans are made to build an art-gallery of the same material–the stones that the builders rejected.

An artist blew in on the way to Nowhere, his baggage a tomato-can. He thought he would stop over for a day or two–he is with us yet, and three years have gone by since he came, and now we could not do without him. Then we have a few Remittance-Men, sent to us from a distance, without return-tickets. Some of these men were willing to do anything but work–they offered to run things, to preach, to advise, to make love to the girls.

We bought them tickets to Chicago, and without violence conducted them to the Four-o’Clock train.

We have boys who have been expelled from school, blind people, deaf people, old people, jailbirds and mental defectives, and have managed to set them all at useful work; but the Remittance-Man of Good Family who smokes cigarettes in bed has proved too much for us–so we have given him the Four-o’Clock without ruth.

We do not encourage people from a distance who want work to come on–they are apt to expect too much. They look for Utopia, when work is work, here as elsewhere. There is just as much need for patience, gentleness, loyalty and love here as anywhere. Application, desire to do the right thing, a willingness to help, and a well-curbed tongue are as necessary in East Aurora as in Tuskegee.

We do our work as well as we can, live one day at a time, and try to be kind.

* * * * *

The village of East Aurora, Erie County, New York, the home of The Roycrofters, is eighteen miles southeast of the city of Buffalo. The place has a population of about three thousand people.

There is no wealth in the town and no poverty. In East Aurora there are six churches, with pastors’ salaries varying from three hundred to one thousand dollars a year; and we have a most excellent school. The place is not especially picturesque or attractive, being simply a representative New York State village. Lake Erie is ten miles distant, and Cazenovia Creek winds its lazy way along by the village.

The land around East Aurora is poor, and so reduced in purse are the farmers that no insurance-company will insure farm property in Erie County under any conditions unless the farmer has some business outside of agriculture–the experience of the underwriters being that when a man is poor enough, he is also dishonest; insure a farmer’s barn in New York State, and there is a strong probability that he will soon invest in kerosene.