father's fields, and we got fond
of the lambs and ducks and chickens, and got used to their being killed
and eaten when our acquaintance reached a certain date, like other
farm-bred folk, which is one amongst the many proofs of the adaptability
of human nature.

So far so good, on my part as well as Jem's. That I should like the
animals "on the place"--the domesticated animals, the workable animals,
the eatable animals--this was right and natural, and befitting my
father's son. But my far greater fancy for wild, queer, useless,
mischievous, and even disgusting creatures often got me into trouble.
Want of sympathy became absolute annoyance as I grew older, and wandered
farther, and adopted a perfect menagerie of odd beasts in whom my
friends could see no good qualities: such as the snake I kept warm in my
trousers-pocket; the stickleback that I am convinced I tamed in its own
waters; the toad for whom I built a red house of broken drainpipes at
the back of the strawberry bed, where I used to go and tickle his head
on the sly; and the long-whiskered rat in the barn, who knew me well,
and whose death nearly broke my heart, though I had seen generations of
unoffending ducklings pass to the kitchen without a tear.

I think it must have been the beasts that made me take to reading: I was
so fond of Buffon's _Natural History_, of which there was an English
abridgment on the dining-room bookshelves.

But my happiest reading days began after the bookseller's agent came
round, and teased my father into taking in the _Penny Cyclopaedia_; and
those numbers in which there was a beast, bird, fish, or reptile were
the numbers for me!

I must, however, confess that if a love for reading had been the only
way in which I had gone astray from the family habits and traditions, I
don't think I should have had much to complain of in the way of blame.

My father "pish"ed and "pshaw"ed when he caught me "poking over" books,
but my dear mother was inclined to regard me as a genius, whose learning
might bring renown of a new kind into the family. In a quiet way of her
own, as she went gently about household matters, or knitted my father's
stockings, she was a great day-dreamer--one of the most unselfish kind,
however; a builder of air-castles, for those she loved to dwell in;
planned, fitted, and furnished according to the measure of her
affections.

It was perhaps because my father always began by disparaging her
suggestions that (by th