ength to
grasp and understand that magnificent mixture of ribaldry and learning,
fun and wisdom, deviltry and divinity. In a few pages' time I knew what
it all meant, and that I was gifted to understand it. I replaced the
book; nor did I read it again for years, but from that hour I was never
quite the same person. The next day I saw Callot's "Temptation of St.
Anthony" for the first time in a shop-window, and felt with joy and pride
that I understood it out of Rabelais. Two young gentlemen--lawyers
apparently--by my side thought it was crazy and silly. To me it was more
like an apocalypse.

I am speaking plain truth when I say that that one quarter of an hour's
reading of Rabelais--standing up--was to me as the light which flashed
upon Saul journeying to Damascus. It seems to me now as if it were the
great event of my life. It came to such a pass in after years that I
could have identified any line in the Chronicle of Gargantua, and I also
was the suggester, father, and founder in London of the Rabelais Club, in
which were many of the best minds of the time, but beyond it all and
brighter than all was that first revelation.

It should be remembered that I had already perused Sterne, much of Swift,
and far more comic and satiric literature than is known to boys, and,
what is far more remarkable, had thoroughly taken it all into my _cor
cordium_ by much repetition and reflection.

Mr. Hunt in time put me up to a great deal of very valuable or curious
_belletristic_ fair-lettered or black-lettered reading, far beyond my
years, though not beyond my intelligence and love. We had been
accustomed to pass to our back-gate of the school through Blackberry
Alley--

"Blackberry Alley, now Duponceau Street,
A rose by any name will smell as sweet"--

which was tenanted principally by social evils. He removed to the corner
of Seventh and Chestnut Streets. Under our schoolroom there was a
gambling den. I am not aware that these surroundings had any effect
whatever upon the pupils. Among the pupils in Seventh Street was one
named Emile Tourtelot. We called him Oatmeal Turtledove. I had another
friend who was newly come from Connecticut. His uncle kept a hotel and
often gave him Havanna cigars. We often took long walks together out of
town and smoked them. He taught me the song--

"On Springfield mountains there did dwell,"

with much more quaint rural New England lore.

About this time my grandfathe