1866] Early Reading 



neighbors, a man of some literary insight, who was 

 about to read the book aloud to his family, invited 

 me to join them, and in his home I heard the story 

 from beginning to end. Later I read "Little Dorrit," 

 "The Old Curiosity Shop," and "The Pickwick 

 Papers," followed by the rest of the long series. 

 But becoming acquainted with " Pendennis," " Henry Thackeray 

 Esmond," and "Vanity Fair," I found greater mental 

 stimulus in Thackeray than in Dickens. I also felt 

 a certain satisfaction in a remark of Becky Sharp, 

 which I ventured to apply to myself. "If I had had 

 a husband like that," said she, "a man with a heart 

 and brains too, I wouldn't have minded his large 

 feet!" Later still the early tales of Bret Harte Bret 

 — "The Luck of Roaring Camp," "Tennessee's ^^^^^ 

 Pardner," and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" — 

 impressed me strongly with their fresh vigor in the 

 portrayal of frontier character and their picturing 

 of noble scenery. At that time, still a boy who had 

 not yet wandered far from the old farm, I little 

 thought that one day Calaveras and Tuolumne, 

 "the Santa Clara wheat," and "the gin and ginger 

 woods" would be part of my normal environment! 



My father had a fair library — too much of it, 

 however, given to works of religious controversy for 

 which I cared little, being already pretty firmly 

 established in "liberal" views. But in the collection Macauiay 

 were several books of poetry; and I remember read- <^^dihe 

 ing Macaulay's History under the impression that ^^"^^ 

 it was fiction of a very interesting kind. Of the 

 poets on our shelves both Byron and Moore fasci- 

 nated me, although in Moore I enjoyed mainly the 

 satirical, not the sentimental, verses. The following 

 lines especially still linger in my memory: 



C 29: 



