The impression I made upon Uncle Cephas must have been favorable,
for when my next birthday rolled around there came with it a book
from Uncle Cephas--my third love, Grimm's ``Household Stories.''
With the perusal of this monumental work was born that passion
for fairy tales and folklore which increased rather than
diminished with my maturer years. Even at the present time I
delight in a good fairy story, and I am grateful to Lang and to
Jacobs for the benefit they have conferred upon me and the rest
of English-reading humanity through the medium of the fairy books
and the folk tales they have translated and compiled.
Baring-Gould and Lady Wilde have done noble work in the same
realm; the writings of the former have interested me
particularly, for together with profound learning in directions
which are specially pleasing to me, Baring-Gould has a distinct
literary touch which invests his work with a grace indefinable
but delicious and persuasive.

I am so great a lover of and believer in fairy tales that I once
organized a society for the dissemination of fairy literature,
and at the first meeting of this society we resolved to demand of
the board of education to drop mathematics from the curriculum in
the public schools and to substitute therefor a four years'
course in fairy literature, to be followed, if the pupil desired,
by a post-graduate course in demonology and folk-lore. We hired
and fitted up large rooms, and the cause seemed to be flourishing
until the second month's rent fell due. It was then discovered
that the treasury was empty; and with this discovery the society
ended its existence, without having accomplished any tangible
result other than the purchase of a number of sofas and chairs,
for which Judge Methuen and I had to pay.