was in the way of study. I was given the chance to read books that they
thought I ought to read, but if I did not like them I was then given
some other good book that I did like. There were certain books that were
taboo. For instance, I was not allowed to read dime novels. I obtained
some surreptitiously and did read them, but I do not think that the
enjoyment compensated for the feeling of guilt. I was also forbidden to
read the only one of Ouida's books which I wished to read--"Under Two
Flags." I did read it, nevertheless, with greedy and fierce hope of
coming on something unhealthy; but as a matter of fact all the parts
that might have seemed unhealthy to an older person made no impression
on me whatever. I simply enjoyed in a rather confused way the general
adventures.

I think there ought to be children's books. I think that the child will
like grown-up books also, and I do not believe a child's book is really
good unless grown-ups get something out of it. For instance, there is a
book I did not have when I was a child because it was not written. It is
Laura E. Richard's "Nursery Rhymes." My own children loved them dearly,
and their mother and I loved them almost equally; the delightfully
light-hearted "Man from New Mexico who Lost his Grandmother out in the
Snow," the adventures of "The Owl, the Eel, and the Warming-Pan," and
the extraordinary genealogy of the kangaroo whose "father was a whale
with a feather in his tail who lived in the Greenland sea," while "his
mother was a shark who kept very dark in the Gulf of Caribee."

As a small boy I had _Our Young Folks_, which I then firmly believed
to be the very best magazine in the world--a belief, I may add, which I
have kept to this day unchanged, for I seriously doubt if any magazine
for old or young has ever surpassed it. Both my wife and I have the
bound volumes of _Our Young Folks_ which we preserved from our youth. I