Knowledge and Inventions 



took up algebra, geometry, and trigonometry 

 and made some little progress in each, and re- 

 viewed grammar. I was fond of reading, but 

 father had brought only a few religious books 

 from Scotland. Fortunately, several of our 

 neighbors had brought a dozen or two of all 

 sorts of books, which I borrowed and read, 

 keeping all of them except the religious ones 

 carefully hidden from father's eye. Among 

 these were Scott's novels, which, like all other 

 novels, were strictly forbidden, but devoured 

 with glorious pleasure in secret. Father was 

 easily persuaded to buy Josephus' "Wars of 

 the Jews," and D'Aubigne's "History of the 

 Reformation," and I tried hard to get him to 

 buy Plutarch's Lives, which, as I told him, 

 everybody, even religious people, praised as a 

 grand good book; but he would have nothing 

 to do with the old pagan until the graham 

 bread and anti-flesh doctrines came suddenly 

 into our backwoods neighborhood, making a 

 stir something like phrenology and spirit- 

 rappings, which were as mysterious in their 

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