CO ATE FARM. 37 



at Svvindon. Then he presently began to 

 read. He had always delighted in books, espe- 

 cially in illustrated books ; now he began to 

 read everything that he could get. 



The boy who reads everything, the boy 

 who takes out his younger brothers and his 

 cousins and makes them all pretend as he 

 pleases, see what he orders them * to see, 

 and shudder at his bidding and at the crea- 

 tures of his own imagination what sort of 

 future is in store for that boy \ And think of 

 what his life might have become had he been 

 forced into clerkery or into trade : how crippled, 

 miserable, and cramped ! It is indeed miser- 

 able to think of the thousands designed for a 

 life of art, of letters, of open air, or of science, 

 wasted and thrown away in labouring at the 

 useless desk or the hateful counter. 



This boy therefore read everything. Pre- 

 sently, when he had read all that there was at 

 Coate, and all that his grandfather had to lend 

 him, he began to borrow of everybody and to 

 buy. It is perfectly wonderful, as everybody 

 knows, how a boy who never seems to get any 

 money manages to buy books. The fact is that 



