CHAPTER II 



YOUTH 



AFTER leaving the academy in Brooklyn, I spent 

 almost a year at a boarding school in Providence, 

 Rhode Island. This seminary is known as the 

 Friends' School ; and at the time I went there, 

 Albert Smiley was the head-master. In all the 

 schools I had attended so far, including this one 

 at Providence, there was nothing in the line of 

 nature study: no physiology, no botany, no 

 zoology, so that my training in any of these 

 lines, or the development of taste for natural 

 history, does not seem to have been dependent 

 on any inspiration acquired from my school life. 



The fall when I went to Providence, the gor- 

 geous coloring of the maple trees and some of the 

 autumn wild-flowers attracted me. I had now 

 become familiar with a few of the commoner 

 birds of the eastern part of America the robin, 

 the bluebird, the meadow-lark, the yellowbird, the 

 barn-swallow, and the catbird. 



My summer vacations were spent at my 

 mother's home, which was now in Plainfield, 

 New Jersey. Most of the time I was out of doors. 



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