to the end of the third shelf, we simply went back and
began again,--a process all too little known to latter-day children.

I can see them yet, those rows of shabby and incongruous volumes, the
contents of which were transferred to our hungry little brains. Some
of them are close at hand now, and I love their ragged corners, their
dog's-eared pages that show the pressure of childish thumbs, and their
dear old backs, broken in my service.

There was a red-covered "Book of Snobs;" "Vanity Fair" with no cover
at all; "Scottish Chiefs" in crimson; a brown copy of George Sand's
"Teverino;" and next it a green Bailey's "Festus," which I only
attacked when mentally rabid, and a little of which went a
surprisingly long way; and then a maroon "David Copperfield," whose
pages were limp with my kisses. (To write a book that a child would
kiss! Oh, dear reward! oh, sweet, sweet fame!)

In one corner--spare me your smiles--was a fat autobiography of
P.T. Barnum, given me by a grateful farmer for saving the life of
a valuable Jersey calf just as she was on the point of strangling
herself. This book so inflamed a naturally ardent imagination, that
I was with difficulty dissuaded from entering the arena as a circus
manager. Considerations of age or sex had no weight with me, and lack
of capital eventually proved the deterrent force. On the shelf above
were "Kenilworth," "The Lady of the Lake," and half of "Rob Roy." I
have always hesitated to read the other half, for fear that it should
not end precisely as I made it end when I was forced, by necessity, to
supplement Sir Walter Scott. Then there was "Gulliver's Travels," and
if any of the stories seemed difficult to believe, I had only to turn
to the maps of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, with the degrees of latitude
and longitude duly marked, which always convinced me that everything
was fair and aboveboard. Of course, there was a great green and gold
Shakespeare, not a properly expurgated edition for female seminaries,
either, nor even prose tales from Shakespeare adapted to young
readers, but the real thing. We expurgated as we read, child fashion,
taking into our sleek little heads all that we could comprehend
or apprehend, and unconsciously passing over what might have been
hurtful, perhaps, at a later period. I suppose we failed to get a very
close conception of Shakespeare's colossal genius, but we did get a
tremendous and lasting impression of force and power, life and truth.