ter. In his conversation Johnson got the fulcrum in the
right place.

I reached home on the twentieth of May with an empty pocket and an empty
stomach, but with a bagful of books. I remember the day because the
grass was green, but the air was full of those great "goose-feather"
flakes of snow which sometimes fall in late May.

I stayed home that summer of '55 and worked on the farm, and pored over
my books when I had a chance. I must have found Locke's "Essay" pretty
tough reading, but I remember buckling to it, getting right down on "all
fours," as one has to, to follow Locke.

I think it was that summer that I read my first novel, "Charlotte
Temple," and was fairly intoxicated with it. It let loose a flood of
emotion in me. I remember finishing it one morning and then going out
to work in the hay-field, and how the homely and familiar scenes fairly
revolted me. I dare say the story took away my taste for Locke and
Johnson for a while.

In early September I again turned my face Jerseyward in quest of a
school, but stopped on my way in Olive to visit friends in Tongore. The
school there, since I had left it, had fared badly. One of the teachers
the boys had turned out of doors, and the others had "failed to give
satisfaction"; so I was urged to take the school again. The trustees
offered to double my wages--twenty-two dollars a month. After some
hesitation I gave up the Jersey scheme and accepted the trustees' offer.

It was during that second term of teaching at Tongore that I first
met Ursula North, who later became my wife. Her uncle was one of the
trustees of the school, and I presume it was this connection that
brought her to the place and led to our meeting.

If I had gone on to Jersey in that fall of '55, my life might have been
very different in many ways. I might have married some other girl, might
have had a large family of children, and the whole course of my life
might have been greatly changed. It frightens me now to think that I
might have missed the Washington life, and Whitman,... and much else
that has counted for so much with me. What I might have gained is, in
the scale, like imponderable air.

I read my Johnson and Locke that winter and tried to write a little
in the Johnsonese buckram style. The young man to-day, under the same
conditions, would probably spend his evenings reading novels or the
magazines. I spent mine poring over "The Rambler."

In April I closed the school and went