ng the rest of my Mother's
life.

Meanwhile, capable as I was of reading, I found my greatest
pleasure in the pages of books. The range of these was limited,
for story-books of every description were sternly excluded. No
fiction of any kind, religious or secular, was admitted into the
house. In this it was to my Mother, not to my Father, that the
prohibition was due. She had a remarkable, I confess to me still
somewhat unaccountable impression that to 'tell a story', that
is, to compose fictitious narrative of any kind, was a sin. She
carried this conviction to extreme lengths. My Father, in later
years, gave me some interesting examples of her firmness. As a
young man in America, he had been deeply impressed by
'Salathiel', a pious prose romance by that then popular writer,
the Rev. George Croly. When he first met my Mother, he
recommended it to her, but she would not consent to open it. Nor
would she read the chivalrous tales in verse of Sir Walter Scott,
obstinately alleging that they were not 'true'. She would read
none but lyrical and subjective poetry. Her secret diary reveals
the history of this singular aversion to the fictitious, although
it cannot be said to explain the cause of it. As a child,
however, she had possessed a passion for making up stories, and
so considerable a skill in it that she was constantly being
begged to indulge others with its exercise. But I will, on so
curious a point, leave her to speak for herself:

'When I was a very little child, I used to amuse myself and my
brothers with inventing stories, such as I read. Having, as I
suppose, naturally a restless mind and busy imagination, this
soon became the chief pleasure of my life. Unfortunately, my
brothers were always fond of encouraging this propensity, and I
found in Taylor, my maid, a still greater tempter. I had not
known there was any harm in it, until Miss Shore [a Calvinist
governess], finding it out, lectured me severely, and told me it
was wicked. From that time forth I considered that to invent a
story of any kind was a sin. But the desire to do so was too
deeply rooted in my affections to be resisted in my own strength
[she was at that time nine years of age], and unfortunately I knew
neither my corruption nor my weakness, nor did I know where to
gain strength. The longing to invent stories grew with violence;
everything I heard or read became food for my distemper. The
simplicity of truth was not sufficient for me; I must