nce we were returning
with our spoil, of which the charming novel must have been but a
fragment. My impression composed itself of many pieces; a great and
various practice of burying my nose in the half-open book for the strong
smell of paper and printer's ink, known to us as the English smell, was
needed to account for it. _That_ was the exercise of the finest sense
that hung about us, my brother and me--or of one at least but little
less fine than the sense for the satisfaction of which we resorted to
Thompson's and to Taylor's: it bore me company during all our returns
from forages and left me persuaded that I had only to snuff up hard
enough, fresh uncut volume in hand, to taste of the very substance of
London. All our books in that age were English, at least all our
down-town ones--I personally recall scarce any that were not; and I take
the perception of that quality in them to have associated itself with
more fond dreams and glimmering pictures than any other one principle of
growth. It was all a result of the deeply _infected_ state: I had been
prematurely poisoned--as I shall presently explain. The Bookstore,
fondest of my father's resorts, though I remember no more of its public
identity than that it further enriched the brave depth of Broadway, was
overwhelmingly and irresistibly English, as not less tonically English
was our principal host there, with whom we had moreover, my father and
I, thanks to his office, such personal and genial relations that I
recall seeing him grace our board at home, in company with his wife,
whose vocal strain and complexion and coiffure and flounces I found none
the less informing, none the less "racial," for my not being then versed
in the language of analysis.

The true inwardness of these rich meanings--those above all of the
Bookstore itself--was that a tradition was thus fed, a presumption thus
created, a vague vision thus filled in: all expression is clumsy for so
mystic a process. What else can have happened but that, having taken
over, under suggestion and with singular infant promptitude, a
particular throbbing consciousness, I had become aware of the source at
which it could best be refreshed? That consciousness, so communicated,
was just simply of certain impressions, certain _sources_ of impression
again, proceeding from over the sea and situated beyond it--or even much
rather of my parents' own impression of such, the fruit of a happy time
spent in and about London