I have thus far sketched the events of my life, but I have not shown how much I have depended on books not only for pleasure and for the wisdom they bring to all who read, but also for that knowledge whies to others through their eyes and their ears. Indeed, books have meant so much more in my education than in that of others, that I shall go back to the time when I began to read.
I read my first ected story in May, 1887, when I was seven years old, and from that day to this I have devoured everything in the shape of a printed page that has e within the reay hungry fiips.
As I have said, I did not study regularly during the early years of my education; nor did I read acc to rule.
At first I had only a few books in raised print--"readers" finners, a colle of stories for children, and a book about the earth called "Our World." I think that was all; but I read them over and over, until the words were so worn and pressed I could scarcely make them out. Sometimes Miss Sullivao me, spelling into my hand little stories and poems that she knew I should uand; but I preferred reading myself to beio, because I liked to read again and agaihings that pleased me.
It was during my first visit to Boston that I really began to read in good ear. I ermitted to spend a part of each day in the Institution library, and to wander from bookcase to bookcase, and take down whatever book my fingers lighted upon. And read I did, whether I uood one word in ten or two words on a page.
The words themselves fasated me; but I took no scious at of what I read. My mind must, however, have been very impressio that period, for it retained many words and whole senteo the meaning of which I had not the fai clue; and afterward, when I began to talk and write, these words aences would flash out quite naturally, so that my friends wo the riess of my vocabulary. I must have read parts of many books (in those early days I think I never read any one book through) and a great deal of poetry in this unprehending way, until I discovered "Little Lord Fauntleroy," which was the first book of any sequence I read uandingly.
One day my teacher found me in a er of the library p over the pages of "The Scarlet Letter." I was then about eight years old. I remember she asked me if I liked little Pearl, and explained some of the words that had puzzled me. Theold me that she had a beautiful story about a little boy which she was sure I should like better than "The Scarlet Letter." The name of the story was "Little Lord Fauntleroy," and she promised to read it to me the following summer. But we did not begiory until August; the first few weeks of my stay at the seashore were so full of discoveries aement that I fot the very existence of books. Then my teacher went to visit some friends in Boston, leaving me for a short time.
Wheurned almost the first thing we did was to begiory of "Little Lord Fauntleroy." I recall distinctly the time and place when we read the first chapters of the fasating childs story. It was a warm afternoon in August. We were sitting together in a hammock which swung from two solemn pi a short distance from the house. We had hurried through the dish-washing after lun, in order that we might have as long an afternoon as possible for the story. As we hastehrough the long grass toward the hammock, the grasshoppers swarmed about us and fastehemselves on our clothes, and I remember that my teacher insisted upon pig them all off before