rdsworth,
Longfellow or Tennyson, for example? What, indeed?

To my surprise this plan, even though set forth with all the unstudied
eloquence at my command, did not appear deeply to appeal to Doctor
Tubley. I surmised that he had attempted some such undertaking at a
previous period and had met with but indifferent success. He said that
for some mysterious reason the nature of the growing boy seemed to
demand action. My own observation subsequently was such as to confirm
this judgment.

In passing I may say that this attribute remains to me one of the most
unfathomable aspects of the complex juvenile mentality as commonly
encountered at present. Though still a comparatively young
man--thirty-eight on Michaelmas Day last past--I cannot conceive that as
a lad I was ever animated with the restless, and I may even say
mischievous, spirit that appears to dominate the waking hours of the
youth of an oncoming generation.

For proof of this assertion I would point to the fact that a great-aunt
of mine, living at an advanced age in the city of Hartford, Connecticut,
continues even now to treasure a handsomely illustrated and fitly
inscribed copy of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," complete in one volume,
which was publicly bestowed on me in my twelfth year for having
committed to memory and correctly repeated two thousand separate
quotations from the Old Testament--an achievement that brought on an
attack resembling brain fever. I do not record this achievement in a
spirit of boastfulness or vanity of the flesh, but merely to show that
from a very early stage of my mundane existence I was by nature studious
and ever mindful of the admonitions of my elders. Indeed, I do not
recall a time when I did not prefer the companionship of cherished and
helpful gift books to the boisterous and ofttimes rough sports of my
youthful acquaintances.

But I digress; let us revert: Abandoning my scheme for a series of
indoor Nature studies, since it did not meet with the approval of my
superior, I set myself resolutely to the task of winning the undivided
affection and admiration of the lads about me. On meeting one in the
public highway or elsewhere I made a point of addressing him as "My fine
fellow!" or "My bright lad!" of patting him on the head and gently
ruffling his hair or twitching the lobe of his ear in a friendly way,
and asking him, first, what his age might be, and, second, how he was
doing at his books.

These questions being s