ce a young gentleman (whom I
was destined to know in after years), a man with curly hair and very
foppish air, accompanied by a page "in an eruption of buttons," and told
me that it was N. P. Willis. And so revelling in romance and travel,
with mince-pie and turkey for my daily food, my pocket stuffed with
money, in the most refined and elegant literary society (at least it was
there on deck), I came to Philadelphia. I may here say that the memory
of Mr. Carlisle has made me through all my life kinder to boys than I
might otherwise have been; and if, as a teacher, I have been popular
among them, it was to a great degree due to his influence. For, as will
appear in many passages in this book, I have to a strange degree the
habit of thinking over marked past experiences, and drawing from them
precedents by which to guide my conduct; hence it has often happened that
a single incident has shown itself in hundreds of others, as a star is
reflected in countless pools.

II. BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 1837-1845.

Return to Philadelphia at twelve years of age--Early discipline--School
at Mr. C. Walker's--B. P. Hunt--My first reading of Rabelais--Mr. Robert
Stewart--Hurlbut's school--Boyish persecution--Much strange
reading--Francois Villon--Early studies in philosophy--Transcendentalism
and its influence--Spanish--School of E. C. Wines--The French
teacher--Long illness--The intelligent horse--Princeton University
professors--Albert Dodd and James Alexander--College life--Theology--Rural
scenes--Reading--My first essays--The Freshman rebellion--Smoking--George
H. Boker--Jacob Behmen or Bohme--Stonington--Captain Nat Palmer and
Commodore Vanderbilt--My graduation.

How happy I was again to see my mother and father and Henry! And then
came other joys. My father had taken a very nice house in Walnut Street,
in the best quarter of the city, below Thirteenth Street, and this was a
source of pleasure, as was also a barrel of apples in the cellar, to
which I had free access. They had been doled out to us very sparingly at
school, and I never shall forget the delight with which I one day in
December at Jamaica Plain discovered a frozen apple on a tree! Then
there was the charm of being in a great city, and familiar old scenes,
and the freedom from bad marks, and being ruled into bounds, and sent to
bed at early hours. There is, in certain cases, a degree of moral
restraint and discipline which is often carried much too far, e