1 866] 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 

 were several books of poetry; and I remember read- andtbe 

 ing Macaulay's History under the impression that poets 

 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 293 



