ere; it was pleasure rather
than toil, for I undertook only the tasks I liked. But what I learned
remained with me, nevertheless.

With Milton I was more familiar than with any other poet, and from
thirteen years of age to eighteen he was my preference. My friend
Angeline and I (another of my cloth-room associates) made the "Paradise
Lost" a language-study in an evening class, under one of the grammar
school masters, and I never open to the majestic lines,--

"High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,"--

Without seeing Angeline's kindly, homely face out-lined through that
magnificence, instead of the lineaments of the evil angel

"by merit raised
To that bad eminence."

She, too, was much older than I, and a most excellent, energetic, and
studious young woman. I wonder if she remembers how hard we tried to get

"Beelzebub--than whom,
Satan except, none higher sat,"

into the limits of our grammatical rules,--not altogether with success,
I believe.

I copied passages from Jeremy Taylor and the old theologians into my
note-books, and have found them useful even recently, in preparing
compilations. Dryden and the eighteenth century poets generally did not
interest me, though I tried to read them from a sense of duty. Pope was
an exception, however. Aphorisms from the "Essay on Man" were in as
common use among us as those from the Book of Proverbs.

Some of my choicest extracts were in the first volume of collected
poetry I ever owned, a little red morocco book called "The Young Man's
Book of Poetry." It was given me by one of my sisters when I was about
a dozen years old, who rather apologized for the young man on the
title-page, saying that the poetry was just as good as if he were not
there.

And, indeed, no young man could have valued it more than I did. It
contained selections from standard poets, and choice ones from less
familiar sources. One of the extracts was Wordsworth's "Sunset among
the Mountains," from the "Excursion," to read which, however often,
always lifted me into an ecstasy. That red morocco book was my
treasure. It traveled with me to the West, and I meant to keep it as
long as I lived. But alas! it was borrowed by a little girl out on the
Illinois prairies, who never brought it back. I do not know that I have
ever quite forgiven her. I ha