not allude especially to Baxter's Saints' Rest, which is far from being
a lively work for the young, but to the Arabian Nights, and particularly
Robinson Crusoe. The thrill that ran into my fingers' ends then has not
run out yet. Many a time did I steal up to this nest of a room,
and, taking the dog's-eared volume from its shelf, glide off into an
enchanted realm, where there were no lessons to get and no boys to
smash my kite. In a lidless trunk in the garret I subsequently unearthed
another motley collection of novels and romances, embracing the
adventures of Baron Trenck, Jack Sheppard, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and
Charlotte Temple--all of which I fed upon like a bookworm.

I never come across a copy of any of those works without feeling a
certain tenderness for the yellow-haired little rascal who used to lean
above the magic pages hour after hour, religiously believing every word
he read, and no more doubting the reality of Sindbad the Sailor, or the
Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, than he did the existence of his
own grandfather.

Against the wall at the foot of the bed hung a single-barrel
shot-gun--placed there by Grandfather Nutter, who knew what a boy
loved, if ever a grandfather did. As the trigger of the gun had been
accidentally twisted off, it was not, perhaps, the most dangerous weapon
that could be placed in the hands of youth. In this maimed condition
its "bump of destructiveness" was much less than that of my small brass
pocket-pistol, which I at once proceeded to suspend from one of the
nails supporting the fowling-piece, for my vagaries concerning the red
man had been entirely dispelled.

Having introduced the reader to the Nutter House, a presentation to the
Nutter family naturally follows. The family consisted of my