into the world of
it, which must have been pretty open to his father. The father read
aloud some of Dickens' Christmas stories, then new; and the boy had a
good deal of trouble with the _Haunted Man_. One rarest night of all,
the family sat up till two o'clock, listening to a novel that my boy
long ago forgot the name of, if he ever knew its name. It was all about
a will, forged or lost, and there was a great scene in court, and after
that the mother declared that she could not go to bed till she heard the
end. His own first reading was in history. At nine years of age he read
the history of Greece, and the history of Rome, and he knew that
Goldsmith wrote them. One night his father told the boys all about Don
Quixote; and a little while after he gave my boy the book. He read it
over and over again; but he did not suppose it was a novel. It was his
elder brother who read novels, and a novel was like _Handy Andy_, or
_Harry Lorrequer_, or the _Bride of Lammermoor_. His brother had another
novel which they preferred to either; it was in Harper's old "Library of
Select Novels," and was called _Alamance; or, the Great and Final
Experiment_, and it was about the life of some sort of community in
North Carolina. It bewitched them, and though my boy could not afterward
recall a single fact or figure in it, he could bring before his mind's
eye every trait of its outward aspect.

All this went along with great and continued political excitement, and
with some glimpses of the social problem. It was very simple then;
nobody was very rich, and nobody was in want; but somehow, as the boy
grew older, he began to discover that there were differences, even in
the little world about him; some were higher and some were lower. From
the first he was taught by precept and example to take the side of the
lower. As the children were denied oftener than they were indulged, the
margin of their own abundance must have been narrower than they ever
knew then; but if they had been of the most prosperous, their bent in
this matter would have been the same. Once there was a church festival,
or something of that sort, and there was a good deal of the provision
left over, which it was decided should be given to the poor. This was
very easy, but it was not so easy to find the poor whom it should be
given to. At last a hard-working widow was chosen to receive it; the
ladies carried it to her front door and gave it her, and she carried it
to her back doo