recommendation in itself. A faded legend on a fly-leaf showed that
the book had been "Presented to Edward Rogers, on his Fourteenth
Birthday, Jan'y 21st, 1852, By his Uncle Daniel."

I took that book back to the kitchen. The Professor had a lamp
burning on the table beside him, and I sat down in its light. In a
few seconds I was following the adventures of the hero,--a hero
whose foot, it seemed "had pressed the summits of the Andes, and
climbed the Cordilleras of the Sierra Madre." He had "steamed it
down the Mississippi, and sculled it up the Orinoco."

The Orinoco! That magic river with the musical name! I knew it
too, and could see it in my mind's eye as I read. The branches of
the trees met across the stream,--parrots screamed, monkeys
chattered, and scampered from one tree to another. The kitchen,
the Professor, vanished from my sight. I was unconscious of the
hard, uncomfortable chair in which I sat, and of the dim,
sputtering light of the badly trimmed lamp.

What else had he done? He told you about his past adventures,
before he began upon the new one. "I had hunted buffaloes with the
Pawnees of the Platte, and ostriches upon the Pampas of the Plata;
I had eaten raw meat with the trappers of the Rocky Mountains, and
roast monkey among the Mosquito Indians." Now, it seemed, he was
off for the war in Mexico,--and I could come along with him, if I
liked.

I did like, and it was two hours later when I suddenly heard an
oily voice saying: "Why, it's half past nine,--James, you're not
going to read all night, are you?" Then I came back to Rogers's