l remained there I haunted the
neighborhood of the market day after day. I measured it, and I recall
that, not having a tape measure, I had to do my best to get its girth
with a folding pocket foot-rule, a difficult undertaking. I carefully
made a record of the utterly useless measurements, and at once began to
write a natural history of my own, on the strength of that seal. This,
and subsequent natural histories, were written down in blank books in
simplified spelling, wholly unpremeditated and unscientific. I had vague
aspirations of in some way or another owning and preserving that seal,
but they never got beyond the purely formless stage. I think, however,
I did get the seal's skull, and with two of my cousins promptly started
what we ambitiously called the "Roosevelt Museum of Natural History."
The collections were at first kept in my room, until a rebellion on the
part of the chambermaid received the approval of the higher authorities
of the household and the collection was moved up to a kind of bookcase
in the back hall upstairs. It was the ordinary small boy's collection
of curios, quite incongruous and entirely valueless except from the
standpoint of the boy himself. My father and mother encouraged me warmly
in this, as they always did in anything that could give me wholesome
pleasure or help to develop me.

The adventure of the seal and the novels of Mayne Reid together
strengthened my instinctive interest in natural history. I was too young
to understand much of Mayne Reid, excepting the adventure part and the
natural history part--these enthralled me. But of course my reading was
not wholly confined to natural history. There was very little effort
made to compel me to read books, my father and mother having the good
sense not to try to get me to read anything I did not like, unless it
was in the way of study. I was given the chance to read books that they
thought I ought to read, but if I did not like them I was then given
some other good book that I did like. There were certain books that were
taboo. For instance, I was not allowed to read dime novels. I obtained
some surreptitiously and did read them, but I do not think that the
enjoyment compensated for the feeling of guilt. I was also forbidden to
read the only one of Ouida's books which I wished to read--"Under Two
Flags." I did read it, nevertheless, with greedy and fierce hope of
coming on something unhealthy; but as a matter of fact all the parts
tha