of a local library,
and in it I found Bates's volume on the Amazon--I forget the exact title
of the book. I found myself in a new world; I lived in Para; I tried to
manufacture an imitation of the Urari poison with a view to
exterminating rats in the warehouse by the use of arrows; I lived and
had my being in the forests of Brazil; and I produced, at intervals, a
thrilling novel, with the glowing atmosphere of the Amazon as a
background. I preferred Mr. Bates to any novelist I had ever read. He
held possession of my imagination, until he was forced out by a Mr.
Jerningham who wrote a most entrancing book on Brittany. Saint Malo
became the only town for me; I adored Henri de la Rochejaquelein; and
the Stuarts, whom I had learned to love at the knees of Sir Walter
Scott, were displaced by the Vend['e]ans.

Noticing that I was devoted to books of travel, my father asked me to
parse Kane's "Arctic Voyages." I found the volumes cold and repellent.
They gave me a rooted prejudice against the North Pole which even the
adventure of Doctor Cook has never enabled me to overcome.

About this time, my mother began to feel that I needed to read something
more gentle, which would root me more effectively in my religion. She
began, I think, with Cardinal Newman's "Callista" in which there was a
thrilling chapter called "The Possession of Juba." It seemed to me one
of the most stirring things I had ever read. Then I was presented with
Mrs. Sadlier's "The Blakes and the Flanagans," which struck me as a very
delightful satire, and with a really interesting novel of New York
called "Rosemary," by Dr. J. V. Huntington; and then a terribly
blood-curdling story of the Carbonari in Italy, called "Lionello." After
this I was wafted into a series of novels by Julia Kavanagh; "Natalie,"
and "Bessie," and "Seven Years," I think were the principals. My father
declined to read them; he thought they were too sentimental, but as the
author had an Irish name he was inclined to regard them with tolerance.
He thought I would be better employed in absorbing "Tom and Jerry; or
The Adventures of Corinthian Bob," by Pierce Egan. My mother objected to
this, and substituted "Lady Violet; or the Wonder of Kingswood Chace,"
by the younger Pierce Egan, which she considered more moral.

My father was very generous at Christmas, and I bought a large volume of
Froissart for two dollars and a half at an old book stand on Fifth
Street, near Spruce. After this, I wa