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Chapter Two
xr "SIC TRANSIT GLORIA"
America in the Eighteen-seventies was a na-
. tion in ferment, wracked with growing—pains.
Homesteaders were spilling over from the east
E into the vastnesses of the prairies and the far
  west: such land as they were not carving into
. farm—homes the railroads, the timber and land
{ companies, the mining corporations were appro-
Y priating, developing, exploiting.
A y Men’s eyes were fixed on horizons not too
, distant and all those horizons were golden-
~ tinted. Almost the entire store of America’s
energy was siphoned into channels of money-mak-
ing, a pursuit to which the panic of the early
V. seventies was only a temporary stumbling—block.
Whatever was big was good. Dreams of grandeur
needed only initiative and aggressiveness to
make them come true. And these grandiose dreams
A were all, or nearly all, of money, of splendid·
A enterprises that would make money.
y Of such stuff was the dream of the Public
y _ Library of Kentucky.
4 A diligent analyst of Louisville library
beginnings was Reuben T. Durrett, lawyer and
historian. He was an authority on pioneer Ken-
; tucky lore, founder of the Filson Club, and the
p' owner of a valuable library the bulk of which,
/ 20 A .
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