than one occasion, of the failure of teachers, taught in the village
school in her native town before her marriage, Philip inherited his love
of poetry, and he well remembered how she used to try to inspire him with
patriotism by reading the orations of Daniel Webster (she was very fond
of orations), and telling him war stories about Grant and Sherman and
Sheridan and Farragut and Lincoln. He distinctly remembered also
standing at her knees and trying, at intervals, to commit to memory the
Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He had learned it all since, because he
thought it would please his mother, and because there was something in it
that appealed to his coming sense of the mystery of life. When he
repeated it to Celia, who had never heard of it, and remarked that it was
all made up, and that she never tried to learn a long thing like that
that wasn't so, Philip could see that her respect for him increased a
little. He did not know that the child got it out of the library the
next day and never rested till she knew it by heart. Philip could repeat
also the books of the Bible in order, just as glibly as the
multiplication-table, and the little minx, who could not brook that a
country boy should be superior to her in anything, had surprised her
mother by rattling them all off to her one Sunday evening, just as if she
had been born in New England instead of in New York. As to the other
fine things his mother read him, out of Ruskin and the like; Philip
chiefly remembered what a pretty glow there was in his mother's face when
she read them, and that recollection was a valuable part of the boy's
education.

Another valuable part of his education was the gracious influence in his
aunt's household, the spirit of candor, of affection, and the sane
common-sense with which life was regarded, the simplicity of its faith
and the patience with which trials were borne. The lessons he learned in
it had more practical influence in his life than all the books he read.