had been to school as a
child. He knew how to write, though he took the greatest liberties with
spelling; he knew how to read and understood what he read, provided the
reading presented no more serious literary difficulties than occurred
in the stories in the almanac. He was the first of his line to allow
himself to be tempted by the town and he lived to regret it. Badly off,
having but little outlet for his industry, making God knows what shifts
to pick up a livelihood, he went through all the disappointments of the
countryman turned townsman. Persecuted by bad luck, borne down by
the burden, for all his energy and good will, he was far indeed from
starting me in entomology. He had other cares, cares more direct and
more serious. A good cuff or two when he saw me pinning an insect to a
cork was all the encouragement that I received from him. Perhaps he was
right.

The conclusion is positive: there is nothing in heredity to explain my
taste for observation. You may say that I do not go far enough back.
Well, what should I find beyond the grandparents where my facts come to
a stop? I know, partly. I should find even more uncultured ancestors:
sons of the soil, plowmen, sowers of rye, neat herds; one and all, by
the very force of things, of not the least account in the nice matters
of observation.

And yet, in me, the observer, the inquirer into things began to take
shape almost in infancy. Why should I not describe my first discoveries?
They are ingenuous in the extreme, but will serve notwithstanding to
tell us something of the way in which tendencies first show themselves.
I was five or six years old. That the poor household might have one
mouth less to feed, I had been placed in grandmother's care, as I have
just been saying. Here, in solitude, my first gleams of intelligence
were awakened amidst the geese, the calves and the sheep. Everything
before that is impenetrable darkness. My real birth is at that
moment when the dawn of personality rises, dispersing the mists of
unconsciousness and leaving a lasting memory. I can see myself plainly,
clad in a soiled frieze frock flapping against my bare heels; I
remember the handkerchief hanging from my waist by a bit of string, a
handkerchief often lost and replaced by the back of my sleeve.

There I stand one day, a pensive urchin, with my hands behind my back
and my face turned to the sun. The dazzling splendor fascinates me. I am
the Moth attracted by the light of the