splendid neglect on the center table in our little parlor. On top of
the Bible lay a photograph album. I had often looked at the pictures
in the album, and one day, after taking the larger book down and
opening it on the floor, I was overjoyed to find that it contained
what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of pictures. I looked at
these pictures many times; in fact, so often that I knew the story
of each one without having to read the subject, and then, somehow, I
picked up the thread of history on which are strung the trials and
tribulations of the Hebrew children; this I followed with feverish
interest and excitement. For a long time King David, with Samson a
close second, stood at the head of my list of heroes; he was not
displaced until I came to know Robert the Bruce. I read a good portion
of the Old Testament, all that part treating of wars and rumors of
wars, and then started in on the New. I became interested in the life
of Christ, but became impatient and disappointed when I found that,
notwithstanding the great power he possessed, he did not make use of
it when, in my judgment, he most needed to do so. And so my first
general impression of the Bible was what my later impression has been
of a number of modern books, that the authors put their best work in
the first part, and grew either exhausted or careless toward the end.

After reading the Bible, or those parts which held my attention,
I began to explore the glass-doored bookcase which I have already
mentioned. I found there _Pilgrim's Progress_, Peter Parley's _History
of the United States_, Grimm's _Household Stories, Tales of a
Grandfather_, a bound volume of an old English publication (I think it
was called _The Mirror_), a little volume called _Familiar Science_,
and somebody's _Natural Theology_, which last, of course, I could not
read, but which, nevertheless, I tackled, with the result of gaining a
permanent dislike for all kinds of theology. There were several other