e
which told the story of Elijah the prophet who, when he was pursued by
enemies who wanted to take his life, was hidden by the Lord by the
brook Cherith, and fed by ravens; and surely the Lord knew what was
good to eat, whether bread or meat. And on what, I asked, did the Lord
feed Elijah? On vegetables or graham bread? No, he directed the ravens
to feed his prophet on flesh. The Bible being the sole rule, father at
once acknowledged that he was mistaken. The Lord never would have sent
flesh to Elijah by the ravens if graham bread were better.

I remember as a great and sudden discovery that the poetry of the
Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton was a source of inspiring,
exhilarating, uplifting pleasure; and I became anxious to know all
the poets, and saved up small sums to buy as many of their books as
possible. Within three or four years I was the proud possessor of
parts of Shakespeare's, Milton's, Cowper's, Henry Kirke White's,
Campbell's, and Akenside's works, and quite a number of others seldom
read nowadays. I think it was in my fifteenth year that I began to
relish good literature with enthusiasm, and smack my lips over
favorite lines, but there was desperately little time for reading,
even in the winter evenings,--only a few stolen minutes now and then.
Father's strict rule was, straight to bed immediately after family
worship, which in winter was usually over by eight o'clock. I was in
the habit of lingering in the kitchen with a book and candle after the
rest of the family had retired, and considered myself fortunate if I
got five minutes' reading before father noticed the light and ordered
me to bed; an order that of course I immediately obeyed. But night
after night I tried to steal minutes in the same lingering way, and
how keenly precious those minutes were, few nowadays can know. Father
failed perhaps two or three times in a whole winter to notice my light
for nearly ten minutes, magnificent golden blocks of time, long to be
remembered like holidays or geological periods. One evening when I was
reading Church history father was particularly irritable, and called
out with hope-killing emphasis, "_John go to bed!_ Must I give you a
separate order every night to get you to go to bed? Now, I will have
no irregularity in the family; you _must_ go when the rest go, and
without my having to tell you." Then, as an afterthought, as if
judging that his words and tone of voice were too severe for so
pardonable an offe