that lighted their unconscious infancy from within and from
beyond.

I was quite as literal as I was visionary in my mental renderings
of the New Testament, read at Aunt Hannah's knee. I was much
taken with the sound of words, without any thought of their
meaning--a habit not always outgrown with childhood. The
"sounding brass and tinkling cymbals," for instance, in the
Epistle to the Corinthians, seemed to me things to be greatly
desired. "Charity" was an abstract idea. I did not know what it
meant. But "tinkling cymbals" one could make music with. I wished
I could get hold of them. It never occurred to me that the
Apostle meant to speak of their melody slightingly.

At meeting, where I began to go also at two years of age, I made
my own private interpretations of the Bible readings. They were
absurd enough, but after getting laughed at a few times at home
for making them public, I escaped mortification by forming a
habit of great reserve as to my Sabbath-day thoughts.

When the minister read, "Cut it down: why cumbereth it the
ground?"? I thought he meant to say "cu-cumbereth." These
vegetables grew on the ground, and I had heard that they were not
very good for people to eat. I honestly supposed that the New
Testament forbade the cultivation of cucumbers.

And "Galilee" I understood as a mispronunciation of "gallery."
"Going up into Galilee" I interpreted into clattering up the
uncarpeted stairs in the meeting-house porch, as the boys did,
with their squeaking brogans, looking as restless as imprisoned