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 Colonel Anderson and introduced me to him, and in this way the windows were opened in the walls of my dungeon through which the light of knowledge streamed in.

Every day's toil and even the long hours of night service were lightened by the book which I carried about with me and read in the intervals that could be snatched from duty.

And the future was made bright by the thought that when Saturday came a new volume could be obtained.

In this way I became familiar with Macaulay's essays and his history, and with Bancroft's "History of the United States," which I studied with more care than any other book I had then read.