AN EGOTISTICAL CHAPTER 3 



always had a certain magnetic or adhesive quality 

 for things that were proper to it and that belonged 

 to me. 



I early took pleasure in trying to express myself 

 on paper, probably in my sixteenth or seventeenth 

 year. In my reading I was attracted by everything 

 of the essay kind. In the libraries and bookstores 

 I was on the lookout for books of essays. And I 

 wanted the essay to start, not in a casual and incon- 

 sequential way, but the first sentence must be a 

 formal enunciation of a principle. I bought the 

 whole of Dr. Johnson's works at a second-hand 

 bookstore in New York, because, on looking into 

 them, I found his essays appeared to be of solid 

 essay-stuff from beginning to end. I passed by 

 Montaigne's Essays at the same time, because they 

 had a personal and gossipy look. Almost my first 

 literary attempts were moral reflections, somewhat 

 in the Johnsonian style. I lived on the "Ram- 

 bler " and the " Idler " all one year, and tried to pro- 

 duce something of my own in similar form. As a 

 youth I was a philosopher ; as a young man I was 

 an Emersonian ; as a middle-aged man I am a liter- 

 ary naturalist; but always have I been an essayist. 



It was while I was at school, in my nineteenth 

 year, that I saw my first author; and I distinctly 

 remember with what emotion I gazed upon him, 

 and followed him in the twilight, keeping on the 

 other side of the street. He was of little account, 



