Getting Acquainted 257 



teachers; "Mr. Waxwing" and "Gooey Bill" 

 helped me through the grades, and the Chicka- 

 dees and Crackles saw me graduate from High 

 School, and when in College my thesis on : "Yor- 

 ick" secured for me my degree of B. M. Bird 

 Man. I am not quite clear on this point, but 

 fancy that I may have been admitted to the Bar, 

 as "The Birds' Attorney" when I used to take 

 "Canada" down to the Lake every day for a 

 swim. 



My Father's experience as a teacher had mini- 

 mized the value to be obtained exclusively from 

 School Books, and he gave us children a large ad- 

 mixture of current reading, including all of Dick- 

 ens. The characters became real personages to 

 us and we knew them just as well as we knew the 

 people in the near-by village. It's not an ex- 

 aggeration to say that it would scarcely have sur- 

 prised any of us children to have turned the corner 

 and come face to face with Daniel Quilp, Sampson 

 Brass, or Miss Miggs, any more than it would 

 have surprised us to have met George Hyer, "Pug 

 Hamilton" and Miss Talker, all residents of the 

 town, whom we knew as well as we knew our own 

 names. Later on, when I went away to school, I 

 heard to my utter astonishment, people discus- 

 sing Dickens' works in a well-bred and pedantic 

 manner and yet they did not know a single char- 

 acter intimately, and would not have stopped to 



