ooking in
there, but he admitted there was something in it.

Thus does it come to pass--this gentle swelling. Let me be a warning to
you, Gentle Reader, when you once get to philosophising yourself over
(along the line of your faults) into the disputed territory of the First
Person Singular. I am not asking you to try to believe my little
philosophy of types. I am trying to, in my humble way, to be sure, but I
would rather, on the whole, let it go. It is not so much my philosophy I
rest my case on, as my sub-philosophy or religion--viz., I like it and
believe in it--saying I. (Thank Heaven that, bad as it is, I have struck
bottom at last!) The best I can do under the circumstances, I suppose,
is to beg (in a perfectly blank way) forgiveness--forgiveness of any and
every kind from everybody, if in this and the following chapters I fall
sometimes to talking of people--people at large--under the general head
of myself.

* * * * *

I was born to read. I spent all my early years, as I remember them, with
books,--peering softly about in them. My whole being was hushed and
trustful and expectant at the sight of a printed page. I lived in the
presence of books, with all my thoughts lying open about me; a kind of
still, radiant mood of welcome seemed to lie upon them. When I looked at
a shelf of books I felt the whole world flocking to me.

I have been civilised now, I should say, twenty, or possibly
twenty-five, years. At least every one supposes I am civilised, and my
whole being has changed. I cannot so much as look upon a great many
books in a library or any other heaped-up place, without feeling bleak
and heartless. I never read if I can help it. My whole attitude toward
current literature is grouty and snappish, a kind of perpetual
interrupted "What are you ringing my door-bell now for?" attitude. I am
a disagreeable character. I spend at least one half my time, I should
judge, keeping things off, in defending my character. Then I spend the
other half in wondering if, after all, it was worth it. What I see in my
window has changed. When I used to go out around and look into it, in
the old days, to see what I was like, I was a sunny, open
valley--streams and roads and everything running down into it, and
opening out of it, and when I go out suddenly now, and turn around in
front of myself and look in--I am a mountain pass. I sift my friends--up
a trail. The few friends that come, come a li