To return to my description of my early home:--the two rooms on either
side of the hall, facing the road, were appropriated by my father for
his surgery and consulting-room; while the two corresponding rooms at
the back were fitted up as our general reception-room, and my father's
bed-room. In the former of these, and in the weedy old garden upon which
it opened, were passed all the days of my boyhood.

It was my father's good-will and pleasure to undertake the sole charge
of my education. Fain would I have gone like other lads of my age to
public school and college; but on this point, as on most others, he was
inflexible. Himself an obscure physician in a remote country town, he
brought me up with no other view than to be his own successor. The
profession was not to my liking. Somewhat contemplative and nervous by
nature, there were few pursuits for which I was less fitted. I knew
this, but dared not oppose him. Loving study for its own sake, and
trusting to the future for some lucky turn of destiny, I yielded to that
which seemed inevitable, and strove to make the best of it.

Thus it came to pass that I lived a quiet, hard-working home life, while
other boys of my age were going through the joyous experience of school,
and chose my companions from the dusty shelves of some three or four
gigantic book-cases, instead of from the class and the playground. Not
that I regret it. I believe, on the contrary, that a boy may have worse
companions than books and busts, employments less healthy than the study
of anatomy, and amusements more pernicious than Shakespeare and Horace.
Thank Heaven! I escaped all such; and if, as I have been told, my
boyhood was unboyish, and my youth prematurely cultivated, I am content
to have been spared the dangers in exchange for the pleasures of a
public school.