res of Robinson
Crusoe, with the wolves in the Pyrenees, and out in the Far East, simply
fascinated me. What I did like in the first part were the adventures
before Crusoe finally reached his island, the fight with the Sallee
Rover, and the allusion to the strange beasts at night taking their
improbable bath in the ocean. Thanks to being already an embryo
zoologist, I disliked the "Swiss Family Robinson" because of the wholly
impossible collection of animals met by that worthy family as they
ambled inland from the wreck. Even in poetry it was the relation of
adventures that most appealed to me as a boy. At a pretty early age I
began to read certain books of poetry, notably Longfellow's poem,
"The Saga of King Olaf," which absorbed me. This introduced me to
Scandinavian literature; and I have never lost my interest in and
affection for it.

Among my first books was a volume of a hopelessly unscientific kind by
Mayne Reid, about mammals, illustrated with pictures no more artistic
than but quite as thrilling as those in the typical school geography.
When my father found how deeply interested I was in this not very
accurate volume, he gave me a little book by J. G. Wood, the English
writer of popular books on natural history, and then a larger one of his
called "Homes Without Hands." Both of these were cherished possessions.
They were studied eagerly; and they finally descended to my children.
The "Homes Without Hands," by the way, grew to have an added association
in connection with a pedagogical failure on my part. In accordance
with what I believed was some kind of modern theory of making education
interesting and not letting it become a task, I endeavored to teach my
eldest small boy one or two of his letters from the title-page. As the
letter "H" appeared in the title an unusual number of times, I selected
that to begin on, my effort being to keep the small boy interested, not
to let him realize that he was learning a lesson, and to convince him
that he was merely having a good time. Whether it was the theory or my
method of applying it that was defective I do not know, but I certainly
absolutely eradicated from his brain any ability to learn what "H" was;
and long after he had learned all the other letters of the alphabet in
the old-fashioned way, he proved wholly unable to remember "H" under any
circumstances.

Quite unknown to myself, I was, while a boy, under a hopeless
disadvantage in studying nature. I was very