And besides fishing there was reading.
I』ve exaggerated if I』ve given the impression that fishing was the ONLY thing I cared about. Fishiainly came first, but reading was a good sed. I must have beeher ten or eleven when I started reading—reading voluntarily, I mean. At that age it』s like disc a new world. I』m a siderable reader even now, in fact there aren』t many weeks in which I don』t get through a couple of novels. I』m what you might call the typical Boots Library subscriber, I always fall for the best-seller of the moment (The Good panions, Bengal Lancer, Hatter』s Castle—I fell for every one of them), and I』ve been a member of the Left Book Club for a year or more. And in 1918, when I was twenty-five, I had a sort of debauch of reading that made a certain differeo my outlook. But nothing is ever like those first years when you suddenly discover that you open a penny weekly paper and pluraight into thieves』 kits and ese opium dens and Polynesian islands and the forests of Brazil.
It was from when I was eleven to when I was about sixteen that I got my biggest kick out of reading. At first it was always the boys』 penny weeklies—little thin papers with vile print and an illustration in three colours on the cover—and a bit later it was books. Sherloes, Dr Nikola, The Iron Pirate, Dracula, Raffles. And Nat Gould and Ranger Gull and a chap whose name I fet who wrote boxing stories almost as rapidly as Nat Gould wrote rag ones. I suppose if my parents had been a little better educated I』d have had 『good』 books shoved down my throat, Dis and Thackeray and so forth, and in fact they did drive us through Quentin Durward at school and Uncle Ezekiel sometimes tried to incite me to read Ruskin and Carlyle. But there were practically no books in our house. Father had never read a book in his life, except the Bible and Smiles』s Self Help, and I didn』t of my own accord read a 『good』 book till much later. I』m not sorry it happehat way. I read the things I wao read, and I got more out of them than I ever got out of the stuff they taught me at school.
The old penny dreadfuls were already going out when I was a kid, and I barely remember them, but there was a regular line of boys』 weeklies, some of which still exist. The Buffalo Bill stories have go, I think, and Nat Gould probably isn』t read any longer, but Nick Carter aon Blake seem to be still the same as ever. The Gem and the Mag, if I』m remembering rightly, started about 1905. The B.O.P. was still rather pi in those days, but Chums, which I think must have started about 1903, lendid. Then there was an encyclopedia—I don』t remember its exaame—which was issued in penny numbers. It never seemed quite worth buying, but a boy at school used to give away baumbers sometimes. If I now know the length of the Mississippi or the differeween an octopus and a cuttle-fish or the exaposition of bell-metal, that』s where I lear from.
Joe never read. He was one of those boys who gh years of schooling and at the end of it are uo read ten lines secutively. The sight of print made him feel sick. I』ve seen him pick up one of my numbers of Chums, read a paragraph or two and then turn away with just the same movement of disgust as a horse when it smells stale hay. He tried to kick me out of reading, but Mother and Father, who had decided that I was 『the clever one』, backed me up. They were rather proud that I showed a taste for 『book-learning』, as they called it. But it was typical of both o