Youth and Education. 



27 



first book she ever read through was the old-fashioned 

 popular romance of Alonso and Melissa, which Ed- 

 ward had borrowed of " a coloured farm labourer at 

 Deacon Thomas's." He found Don Quixote in posses- 

 sion of a half-witted man who had never thousfht of 

 reading it, but was very willing to lend and ultimately 

 to barter it for a trifle. It was in four small, closely 

 printed volumes bound in sheepskin, and in the years 

 of blindness that were to come, at times when all other 

 means of diversion failed to relieve the gloom that 

 settled so deep and thick over poor Edward, his sister 

 found that she had only to open one of these volumes 

 and read from it to call forth a smile or a laugh. In 

 the never-failing interest in Sancho and his master his 

 own miseries were forgotten. 



When a small circulating library w^as organized at 

 Milton he became a subscriber, paying the subscrip- 

 tion from a potato patch his father allotted him in the 

 corner of a field. The only scientific book on the 

 shelves of this library was Buffon's t' Natural History," 

 and this he read again and again. 



This constant reading not only informed Edward's 

 mind, but developed his natural powers of expression. 

 In the family circle he would often repeat the substance 

 of a chapter or book he had been reading, and could 

 not fail to find how much the effective worth of a 

 thought is multiplied when it is told clearly and forci- 

 bly, and with adaptation to the hearers. 



As a youth Edward was very strong and athletic, a 

 capital sportsman. His sight was the keenest and his 

 aim the surest. He would often, in a shooting party, 

 bring down a bird before any one else had so much 

 as descried it. His enjoyments afield were, however, 

 to be cut short just as he w^as entering upon manhood. 



