to shoulder a two
bushel sack of wheat and could hold my own with most of the harvesters.
Although short and heavy, I was deft with my hands, as one or two of
the neighborhood bullies had reason to know and in many ways I was
counted a man.

I read during this year nearly one hundred dime novels, little
paper-bound volumes filled with stories of Indians and wild horsemen and
dukes and duchesses and men in iron masks, and sewing girls who turned
out to be daughters of nobility, and marvellous detectives who bore
charmed lives and always trapped the villains at the end of the story--

Of all these tales, those of the border naturally had most allurement.
There was the _Quaker Sleuth_, for instance, and _Mad Matt the Trailer_,
and _Buckskin Joe_ who rode disdainfully alone (like Lochinvar),
rescuing maidens from treacherous Apaches, cutting long rows of death
notches on the stock of his carbine. One of these narratives contained a
phantom troop of skeleton horsemen, a grisly squadron, which came like
an icy wind out of the darkness, striking terror to the hearts of the
renegades and savages, only to vanish with clatter of bones, and click
of hoofs.

In addition to these delight-giving volumes, I traded stock with other
boys of the neighborhood. From Jack Sheet I derived a bundle of
_Saturday Nights_ in exchange for my _New York Weeklys_ and from one of
our harvest hands, a near-sighted old German, I borrowed some
twenty-five or thirty numbers of _The Sea Side Library_. These also cost
a dime when new, but you could return them and get a nickel in credit
for another,--provided your own was in good condition.

It is a question whether the reading of all this exciting fiction had an
ill effect on my mind or not. Apparently it had very little effect of
any sort other than to make the borderland a great deal more exciting
than the farm, and yet so far as I can discover, I had no keen desire to
go West and fight Indians and I showed no disposition to rob or murder
in the manner of my heroes. I devoured _Jack Harkaway_ and _The Quaker
Sleuth_ precisely as I played ball--to pass the time and because I
enjoyed the game.

Deacon Garland was highly indignant with my father for permitting such
reading, and argued against it furiously, but no one paid much attention
to his protests--especially after we caught the old gentleman sitting
with a very lurid example of "The Damnable Lies" open in his hand. "I
was only looking into it t