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? LOUISVILLE FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY
I pleasure that wealth, regulated by taste
`¤ or urbanity, can bestow. There the "red
\ Heel" of Versailles may imagine himself
in the emporium of fashion, and whilst
leading beauty through the mazes of the
\ dance, forget that he is in the wilds of
America. The theatre, public and private
balls, a sober game of whist, or the more
scientific one of billiards, with an oc- _
casional reunion of friends around the
festive board, constitute the principal
amusement; and it is with pleasure l am
able to assert, without fear of contra—
y diction, that gambling forms no part of
{ them. Whatever may have been the case
Z formerly, there is hardly at the present
U day a vestige to be seen of this ridicu-
_ lous and disgraceful practice; and if it
V exists at all, it is only to be found in
the secret dens of midnight swindlers,
. within whose walls once to enter isdis—
’} honor, infamy, and ruin.(9)
It was in such a frontier metropolis that
the first of a succession of abortive attempts
V was made, in l8l6, to establish a library in
A Louisville. lt was not Kentucky’s first libra-
ry, nor even one of the first ten in the State.
In 1796 some leading citizens of Lexington
founded a library, the first west of the Alle-
gheny Mountains, for the benefit of the stu-
dents of Transylvania Seminary. As the Tran-
— sylvania Library, it was housed`at the seminary
at first. In lSOO, though, its proprietors,
J/_ believing that it would be more generally use-
t ful if it were centrally located, removed it to
{ a 6
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