efted"
nature was horribly disgusted and pained by this process, but my own
belief is that had she inherited the propensity to catch fish, even that
would not have destroyed it in her. I am not myself a cruel or
hardhearted woman (though I have the hunter's passion very strongly),
and invariably baited my own hook, in spite of the disgust and horror I
experienced at the wretched twining of the miserable worms round my
fingers, and springing of the poor little live bait with its back
pierced with a hook. But I have never allowed any one to do this office
for me, because it seemed to me that to inflict such a task on any one,
because it was revolting to me, was not fair or sportsmanlike; and so I
went on torturing my own bait and myself, too eagerly devoted to the
sport to refrain from it, in spite of the price I condemned myself to
pay for it. Moreover, if I have ever had female companions on my fishing
excursions, I have invariably done this service for them, thinking the
process too horrid for them to endure; and have often thought that if I
were a man, nothing could induce me to marry a woman whom I had seen
bait her own hook with any thing more sensitive than paste.

I have said that I followed no systematic studies after I left school;
but from that time began for me an epoch of indiscriminate, omnivorous
reading, which lasted until I went upon the stage, when all my own
occupations were necessarily given up for the exercise of my profession.

At this time my chief delight was in such German literature as
translations enabled me to become acquainted with. La Motte Fouque,
Tieck, Wieland's "Oberon," Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," were my principal
studies; soon to be followed by the sort of foretaste of Jean Paul
Richter that Mr. Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" gave his readers; both
matter and manner in that remarkable work bearing far more resemblance
to the great German Incomprehensible than to any thing in the English
language, certainly not excepting Mr. Carlyle's own masterly articles in
the _Edinburgh Review_ on Burns, Elliot the Corn-Law Rhymer, etc.
Besides reading every book that came within my reach, I now commenced
the still more objectionable practice of scribbling verses without stint
or stay; some, I suppose, in very bad Italian, and some, I am sure, in
most indifferent English; but the necessity was on me, and perhaps an
eruption of such rubbish was a safer process than keeping it in the
mental system might