mistress, not knowing whither it tended, when
at once my mind awoke to the meaning of that most delightful of all
narratives,--the story of Joseph. Was there ever such a discovery made
before! I actually found out for myself, that the art of reading is the
art of finding stories in books, and from that moment reading became one
of the most delightful of my amusements. I began by getting into a
corner at the dismissal of the school, and there conning over to myself
the new-found story of Joseph; nor did one perusal serve; the other
Scripture stories followed,--in especial, the story of Samson and the
Philistines, of David and Goliath, of the prophets Elijah and Elisha;
and after these came the New Testament stories and parables. Assisted by
my uncles, I began to collect a library in a box of birch-bark about
nine inches square, which I found quite large enough to contain a great
many immortal works,--Jack the Giant-Killer, and Jack and the
Bean-Stalk, and the Yellow Dwarf, and Blue Beard, and Sinbad the Sailor,
and Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, with
several others of resembling character. Those intolerable nuisances the
useful-knowledge books had not yet arisen, like tenebrious stars, on the
educational horizon, to darken the world, and shed their blighting
influence on the opening intellect of the "youth-hood;" and so, from my
rudimental books--books that made themselves truly such by their
thorough assimilation with the rudimental mind--I passed on, without
being conscious of break or line of division, to books on which the
learned are content to write commentaries and dissertations, but which I
found to be quite as nice children's books as any of the others. Old
Homer wrote admirably for little folk, especially in the Odyssey; a copy
of which,--in the only true translation extant,--for, judging from its
surpassing interest, and the wrath of critics, such I hold that of Pope
to be,--I found in the house of a neighbour. Next came the Iliad; not,
however, in a complete copy, but represented by four of the six volumes
of Bernard Lintot. With what power, and at how early an age, true genius
impresses! I saw, even at this immature period, that no other writer
could cast a javelin with half the force of Homer. The missiles went
whizzing athwart his pages; and I could see the momentary gleam of the
steel, ere it buried itself deep in brass and bull-hide. I next
succeeded in discovering for myself a c