introduction to the literature of plot, counterplot, intrigue, and
crime, and the mystery of the murder was very real to us. This book,
still in existence, with all the birds headless from over-exertion,
is always inextricably associated in my mind with childish woes, as
a desire on my part to make the birds wag their heads was always
contemporaneous, to a second, with a like desire on my sister's part;
and on those rare days when the precious volume was taken down, one of
us always donned the penitential nightgown early in the afternoon and
supped frugally in bed, while the other feasted gloriously at the
family board, never quite happy in her virtue, however, since it
separated her from beloved vice in disgrace. That paltry tattered
volume, when it confronts me from its safe nook in a bureau drawer,
makes my heart beat faster and sets me dreaming! Pray tell me if any
book read in your later and wiser years ever brings to your mind such
vivid memories, to your lips so lingering a smile, to your eye so
ready a tear? True enough, "we could never have loved the earth so
well if we had had no childhood in it.... What novelty is worth that
sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is
known?"

This autobiographical babble is excusable for one reason only.

It is in remembering what books greatly moved us in earlier days; what
books wakened strong and healthy desires, enlarged the horizon of our
understanding, and inspired us to generous action, that we get
some clue to the books with which to surround our children; and a
reminiscence of this kind becomes a sort of psychological observation.
The moment we realize clearly that the books we read in childhood and
youth make a profound impression that can never be repeated later
(save in some rare crisis of heart and soul, where a printed page