I found myself
in this so long desired room.

It proved to be a very large library. This was indeed a precious
discovery. I looked round on the books with the greatest delight. I
thought I would read them every one. I now forsook all my favourite
haunts, and passed all my time here. I took down first one book, then
another.

If you never spent whole mornings alone in a large library, you cannot
conceive the pleasure of taking down books in the constant hope
of finding an entertaining book among them; yet, after many days,
meeting with nothing but disappointment, it becomes less pleasant. All
the books within my reach were folios of the gravest cast. I could
understand very little that I read in them, and the old dark print and
the length of the lines made my eyes ache.

When I had almost resolved to give up the search as fruitless, I
perceived a volume lying in an obscure corner of the room. I opened
it. It was a charming print; the letters were almost as large as the
type of the Family Bible. In the first page I looked into I saw the
name of my favourite Ishmael, whose face I knew so well from the
tapestry, and whose history I had often read in the Bible.

I sate myself down to read this book with the greatest eagerness. The
title of it was "Mahometism Explained." It was a very improper book,
for it contained a false history of Abraham and his descendants.

I shall be quite ashamed to tell you the strange effect it had on me.
I know it was very wrong to read any book without permission to do so.
If my time were to come over again, I would go and tell my mamma that
there was a library in the house, and ask her to permit me to read a
little while every day in some book that she might think proper to
select for me. But unfortunately I did not then recollect that I ought
to do this: the reason of my strange forgetfulness might be that my
mother, following the example of her patroness, had almost wholly
discontinued talking to me. I scarcely ever heard a word addressed to
me from morning to night. If it were not for the old servants saying
"Good morning to you, miss Margaret," as they passed me in the long
passages, I should have been the greatest part of the day in as
perfect a solitude as Robinson Crusoe. It must have been because I
was never spoken to at all, that I forgot what was right and what was
wrong, for I do not believe that I ever remembered I was doing wrong
all the time I was reading in the library. A gr