s of any period, however vivid they were in
passing. The memory may hold record of everything, as it is believed,
but it will not be easily entreated to give up its facts, and I find
myself striving in vein to recall the things that I must have read that
year in the country. Probably I read the old things over; certainly I
kept on with Cervantes, and very likely with Goldsmith. There was a
delightful history of Ohio, stuffed with tales of the pioneer times,
which was a good deal in the hands of us boys; and there was a book of
Western Adventure, full of Indian fights and captivities, which we wore
to pieces. Still, I think that it was now that I began to have a
literary sense of what I was reading. I wrote a diary, and I tried to
give its record form and style, but mostly failed. The versifying which
I was always at was easier, and yielded itself more to my hand. I should
be very glad to, know at present what it dealt with.

VIII. LIGHTER FANCIES

When my uncles changed their minds in regard to colonizing their families
at the mills, as they did in about a year, it became necessary for my
father to look about for some new employment, and he naturally looked in
the old direction. There were several schemes for getting hold of this
paper and that, and there were offers that came to nothing. In that day
there were few salaried editors in the country outside of New York, and
the only hope we could have was of some place as printers in an office
which we might finally buy. The affair ended in our going to the State
capital, where my father found work as a reporter of legislative
proceedings for one of the daily journals, and I was taken into the
office as a compositor. In this way I came into living contact with
literature again, and the daydreams began once more over the familiar
cases of type. A definite literary ambition grew up in me, and in the
long reveries of the afternoon, when I was distributing my case,
I fashioned a future of overpowering magnificence and undying celebrity.
I should be ashamed to say what literary triumphs I achieved in those
preposterous deliriums. What I actually did was to write a good many
copies of verse, in imitation, never owned, of Moore and Goldsmith, and
some minor poets, whose work caught my fancy, as I read it in the
newspapers or put it into type.

One of my pieces, which fell so far short of my visionary performances as
to treat of the lowly and familiar theme of Spring, was