ink I have some of my notes, still left,
and if so I'll let you see them. Perhaps they will help you to make a
beginning in this too. Now, Charley, I want you to try this, as well, as
the other. Will you, for the sake of pleasing uncle Brown?"

"As sure, as I live, uncle, I will, and I'll begin the very next Sunday,
and see what I can do; and if I don't make out very well at first, I'll
keep trying till I can do better."

"Thank you, my boy. And now I won't tell you but one more of these
things, at present, but leave them till other occasions. You don't know
one of the strongest reasons, why I wish you to have a Museum, and to
get a knowledge of natural history."

"What is the reason, uncle? Won't you tell me?"

"It is, Charley, to prevent you, at least while you are so young, from
forming the habit of reading the kinds of novels and stories, which are
so plentiful now-a-days. I mean those, which are filled with all sorts
of wild, horrible things. Reading such books would be very likely to
make your mind sick, as taking poison would your body, and then you
would'nt like to study or to read at all, books that would make you
wise and good. Why, sometimes such stories drive people actually crazy."

"I'll tell you something, that happened to me once, when I was quite a
small boy, that made me almost crazy, for a while, and it is a wonder,
that it didn't make me quite so.

"I heard a story told, one day, which of course was the same thing as
reading it. This story was, that a traveller, being once on a journey
through a wild country, full of woods and rocks, came by a large cave,
in the side of a hill and partly under ground, and for some reason went
into it. He found there a horrible looking creature, a woman, as tall as
a giant, down to the waist, and the lower part of her a long,
monstrously large snake.

"I felt quite frightened, when I heard the story, and all the rest of
the day, I couldn't help thinking uneasily of that gigantic woman snake.
I was more frightened than ever, when the time came for me to go to bed
at night. I slept then in the attic and used to go to bed without a
light, for I had never been afraid of the dark. I went pretty slowly, I
tell you, till I got to the attic door, and there I stopped awhile,
afraid to open it for fear of seeing something horrid. But my father
called to me to go to bed instantly. I opened the door, and there I saw
the woman snake, part reaching into the dark above. I saw