a less scholarly, more popular
character, such as novels, sermons, plays, comic ballads, religious
poems, and the like; as well as by working with her needle, and
sometimes copying legal and other documents, Mrs. Winwood managed to
keep the kettle boiling. And in the bookselling and the copying, she
soon came to have the aid of Philip.

The boy, too, loved books passionately, finding in them consolation
for the deprivations incidental to his poverty. But, being keenly
sympathetic, he had a better sense of his mother's necessities than
his father had shown, and to the amelioration of her condition and his
own, he sacrificed his love of books so far as to be, when occasion
offered, an uncomplaining seller of those he liked, and a dealer in
those he did not like. His tastes were, however, broader than his
father's, and he joyfully lost himself in the novels and plays his
father would have disdained.

He read, indeed, everything he could put his hands on, that had, to
his mind, reason, or wit, or sense, or beauty. Many years later, when
we were in London, his scholarly yet modest exposition of a certain
subject eliciting the praise of a group in a Pall Mall tavern, and he
being asked "What university he was of," he answered, with a playful
smile, "My father's bookshop." It was, indeed, his main school of
book-learning. But, as I afterward told him, he had studied in the
university of life also. However, I am now writing of his boyhood in
Philadelphia; and of that there is only this left to be said.

In catering to his mind, he did not neglect bodily skill either. His
early reading of Plutarch and other warlike works had filled him with
desire to emulate the heroes of battle. An old copy of Saviolo's book
on honour and fence, written in the reign of Elizabeth, or James, I
forget which, had in some manner found its way to his father's
shelves; and from this Philip secretly obtained some correct ideas of
swordsmanship.[2] Putting them in practice one day in the shop, with a
stick, when he thought no one was looking, he suddenly heard a cry of
"bravo" from the street door, and saw he was observed by a Frenchman,
who had recently set up in Philadelphia as a teacher of fencing,
dancing, and riding. This expert, far from allowing Philip to be
abashed, complimented and encouraged him; entered the shop, and made
friends with him. The lad, being himself as likable as he found the
lively foreigner interesting, became in time someth