id not feel that I was doing anything wrong, for I had heard
my father say he was willing his daughters should read that one novel.
He probably did not intend the remark for the ears of his youngest,
however.

My appetite for reading was omnivorous, and I devoured a great many
romances. My sisters took them from a circulating library, many more,
perhaps, than came to my parents' knowledge; but it was not often that
one escaped me, wherever it was hidden. I did not understand what I was
reading, to be sure; and that was one of the best and worst things
about it. The sentimentalism of some of those romances was altogether
unchildlike; but I did not take much of it in. It was the habit of
running over pages and pages to get to the end of a story, the habit of
reading without caring what I read, that I know to have been bad for my
mind. To use a nautical expression, my brain was in danger of getting
"water-logged." There are so many more books of fiction written
nowadays, I do not see how the young people who try to read one tenth
of them have any brains left for every-day use.

One result of my infantile novel-reading was that I did not like to
look at my own face in a mirror, because it was so unlike that of
heroines, always pictured with "high white foreheads" and "cheeks of a
perfect oval." Mine was round, ruddy, and laughing with health; and,
though I practiced at the glass a good deal, I could not lengthen it by
puckering down my lips. I quite envied the little girls who were pale
and pensive-looking, as that was the only ladyfied standard in the
romances. Of course, the chief pleasure of reading them was that of
identifying myself with every new heroine. They began to call me a
"bookworm" at home. I did not at all relish the title.

It was fortunate for me that I liked to be out of doors a great deal,
and that I had a brother, John, who was willing to have me for an
occasional companion. Sometimes he would take me with him when he went
huckleberrying, up the rural Montserrat Road, through Cat Swamp, to the
edge of Burnt Hills and Beaver Pond. He had a boy's pride in explaining
these localities to me, making me understand that I had a guide who was
familiar with every inch of the way. Then, charging me not to move
until he came back, he would leave me sitting alone on a great craggy
rock, while he went off and filled his basket out of sight among the
bushes. Indeed, I did not want to move, it was all so new and
fas