m, I attributed this to mere
prejudice.

The "Boccaccio" was, as I have said, fat and large. For a boy who likes
to read, a fat book is very tempting, and just as I had seated myself
one afternoon on the front doorstep, to read the story of the Falcon,
and having finished it with great pleasure, dipped into another tale not
so edifying, my mother appeared. She turned pale with horror, and seized
the book at once. My father was informed of what had occurred. He was
little alarmed, I think. My mother said: "We shall have to change the
whole course of this boy's reading." "We shall have to change the boy
first," my father said, with a sigh. But this was not the end. At the
proper time I was led to the Pastor, who was my mother's confessor. The
book was presented to him for destruction.

"It's a bad book," the Monsignore said. "I hope you didn't talk about
any of these stories to the other boys in school?"

"Oh, no," I said; "if I did, they would say much worse things, and I
would probably have to tell them in confession. Besides," I added, "all
the people in the Boccaccio book were good Catholics, I suppose, as they
were Italians, and I think, after all, when they caught the plague, they
died good deaths."

The Pastor looked puzzled, took the book, and gave me his blessing and
dismissed me. And my mother seemed to think that I was sufficiently
exorcised.

After this the books I read were more carefully considered. I was given
the "Tales of Canon Schmidt"--dear little stories of German children in
the Black Forest, with strange little wood-cuts, which went very well
with another volume I found at this time called "Jack Halifax," not
"John Halifax, Gentleman," which my mother had already read to me--but a
curious little tome long out of print. And then there sailed upon my
vision a long procession of the works of the Flemish novelist, Hendrik
Conscience, whose "Lion of Flanders" opened a new world of romance, and
there were "Wooden Clara," and other pieces which made one feel as if
one lived in Flanders.

Just about this time I read in Littell's _Living Age_ a novel called
"The Amber Witch," and some of Fritz Reuter's Low German stories; but
these were all effaced by "The Quaker Soldier." This may not have been
much of a novel. I did not put it to the touch of comparison with "The
Virginians" or "Esmond." They were what my father called
"classics"--things superior and apart; but "The Quaker Soldier" was
quite good en