hy, there are no pictures of us as children,
so I can form no opinion of how I differed in my looks from the
others. I remember hearing my parents say that I showed more of the
Kelly--Mother's family.

I early "took to larnin'," as Father used to say, differing from my
brothers and sisters in this respect. I quickly and easily distanced
them all in the ordinary studies. I had gone through Dayball's
Arithmetic while two of my older brothers were yet in addition.
"Larnin'" came very hard to all of them except to Hiram and me, and
Hiram did not have an easy time of it, though he got through his
Dayball, and studied Greenleaf's Grammar.

There was a library of a couple of dozen of volumes in the district, and
I used to take home books from it. They were usually books of travel or
of adventure. I remember one, especially, a great favorite, "Murphy,
the Indian Killer." I must have read this book several times. Novels, or
nature books, or natural-history books, were unknown in that library. I
remember the "Life of Washington," and I am quite certain that it was a
passage in this book that made a lasting impression upon me when I was
not more than six or seven years old. I remember the impression, though
I do not recall the substance of the passage. The incident occurred
one Sunday in summer when Hiram and a cousin of ours and I were playing
through the house, I carrying this book in my hand. From time to time
I would stop and read this passage aloud, and I can remember, as if
it were but yesterday, that I was so moved by it, so swept away by its
eloquence, that, for a moment, I was utterly oblivious to everything
around me. I was lifted out of myself, caught up in a cloud of feeling,
and wafted I know not whither. My companions, being much older than I
was, regarded not my reading.

These exalted emotional states, similar to that just described, used
occasionally to come to me under other conditions about this time, or
later. I recall one such, one summer morning when I was walking on
the top of a stone wall that ran across the summit of one of those
broad-backed hills which you yourself know. I had in my hand a bit of a
root of a tree that was shaped much like a pistol. As I walked along the
toppling stones, I flourished this, and called and shouted and exulted
and let my enthusiasm have free swing. It was a moment of supreme
happiness. I was literally intoxicated; with what I do not know. I only
remember that life seemed