Bible. "If I could be grateful to New England for nothing else," he
would say, "I should bless her forevermore for pounding me with the
Bible and the spelling-book." And in proof of the earnestness of this
declaration he spent many hours in Boston a year or two ago, trying to
find "one of those spellers that temporarily made me lose my faith in
the system of the universe."

It is easy at this day to look back three decades and note the
characteristics which appeared trivial enough then, but which, clinging
to him and developing, had a marked effect on his manhood and on the
direction of his talents. As a boy his fondness for pets amounted to a
passion, but unlike other boys he seemed to carry his pets into a higher
sphere and to give them personality. For each pet, whether dog, cat,
bird, goat, or squirrel--he had the family distrust of a horse--he not
only had a name, but it was his delight to fancy that each possessed a
peculiar dialect of human speech, and each he addressed in the humorous
manner conceived. He ignored the names in common use for domestic
animals and chose or invented those more pleasing to his exuberant
fancy. This conceit was always with him, and years afterward, when his
children took the place of his boyish pets, he gratified his whim for
strange names by ignoring those designated at the baptismal font and
substituting freakish titles of his own riotous fancy. Indeed it must
have been a tax on his imaginative powers. When in childhood he was
conducting a poultry annex to the homestead, each chicken was properly
instructed to respond to a peculiar call, and Finnikin, Minnikin,
Winnikin, Dump, Poog, Boog, seemed to recognize immediately the queer
intonations of their master with an intelligence that is not usually
accorded to chickens. With this love for animal life was developed also
that tenderness of heart which was so manifest in my brother's daily
actions. One day--he was then a good-sized boy--he came into the house,