This idea was strengthened in the family. Devoted as
my father was to business, he always showed the greatest
respect for men of thought. I have known him, even
when most absorbed in his pursuits, to watch occasions
for walking homeward with a clergyman or teacher,
whose conversation he especially prized. There was scant
respect in the family for the petty politicians of the
region; but there was great respect for the instructors
of the academy, and for any college professor who happened
to be traveling through the town. I am now in my
sixty-eighth year, and I write these lines from the American
Embassy in Berlin. It is my duty here, as it has
been at other European capitals, to meet various high
officials; but that old feeling, engendered in my childhood,
continues, and I bow to the representatives of
the universities,--to the leaders in science, literature, and
art, with a feeling of awe and respect far greater than
to their so-called superiors,--princelings and high military
or civil officials.

Influences of a more direct sort came from a primary
school. To this I was taken, when about three years old,
for a reason which may strike the present generation
as curious. The colored servant who had charge of me
wished to learn to read--so she slipped into the school and
took me with her. As a result, though my memory runs
back distinctly to events near the beginning of my fourth
year, it holds not the faintest recollection of a time when
I could not read easily. The only studies which I recall