owth the different stages of civilization from the savage to the
civilized man. Some time the average boy typifies the Indian, the
cowboy, prizefighter, pirate, sailor, soldier; and all classes of rough,
wild men are wonderfully attractive to him. He wishes to be like them
and plays at being one of them. For more than a year I was greatly
attached to the ruffians on the wharves, and to such of the Montville
Indians as I could make friends with. A wandering party of Indians from
the Penobscot tribe had their tents pitched for a whole summer just
outside the city, with whom I became intimate, and spent my leisure time
with them. I made my errands go their way, however long the circuit. I
should have gone away with them, would they have had me. To live in a
tent and shoot with a bow became to me the ideal of life. Strange it is
that the most vivid memory of that episode remaining with me is the
peculiar smell of the Indians; but it was not then offensive to me.

All these propensities were greatly stimulated by reading at this time
the Wandering Jew of Eugene Sue. I had found the volume, a paper covered
pamphlet edition, in a drawer in the store. I carried it home secretly
and read it at night. After I was supposed to be in bed and asleep, and
the house still, I used to get up, partly dress, light my lamp and read
often until midnight or as long as the oil held out. I doubt if any one
knows the supreme pleasure and excitement of reading, who has not read a
book surreptitiously. All the mysteries and horrors of the Wandering Jew
entered into my soul, and while it opened a scene and actions utterly
new to me, it sobered me far beyond anything that had ever happened to
me. About the same time I had many gloomy days and nights of terror from
having seen the bodies of twenty-five drowned passengers from the wreck
of a steamboat which plied between Norwich and New York City. Our poet
clerk took me with him to see them the morning they were brought to the
dock on another steamboat of the same line. They were laid out in rows
on the main deck, frozen stiff, for it was the winter season, covered
with sand and particles of ice, their flesh dreadfully lacerated and
blue, their features contorted into ghastly shapes. Among them were two
men whom we knew well, frequenters of our store. I clung to the hand of
the clerk, and should have fainted, had he not taken me away
immediately. He himself was overcome, and his sad face was sadder and