oing to have a rat-tat-too."
My mother would beg him to shut the window-shutters, and though she
could no longer see to read, she kept the Bible on her knee for
protection.

My mother taught me to read the Bible, and to say my prayers morning and
evening; otherwise she allowed me to grow up a wild creature. When I was
seven or eight years old I began to be useful, for I pulled the fruit
for preserving; shelled the peas and beans, fed the poultry, and looked
after the dairy, for we kept a cow.

On one occasion I had put green gooseberries into bottles and sent them
to the kitchen with orders to the cook to boil the bottles uncorked,
and, when the fruit was sufficiently cooked, to cork and tie up the
bottles. After a time all the house was alarmed by loud explosions and
violent screaming in the kitchen, the cook had corked the bottles before
she boiled them, and of course they exploded. For greater preservation,
the bottles were always buried in the ground; a number were once found
in our garden with the fruit in high preservation which had been buried
no one knew when. Thus experience is sometimes the antecedent of
science, for it was little suspected at that time that by shutting out
the air the invisible organic world was excluded--the cause of all
fermentation and decay.

I never cared for dolls, and had no one to play with me. I amused myself
in the garden, which was much frequented by birds. I knew most of them,
their flight and their habits. The swallows were never prevented from
building above our windows, and, when about to migrate, they used to
assemble in hundreds on the roof of our house, and prepared for their
journey by short flights. We fed the birds when the ground was covered
with snow, and opened our windows at breakfast-time to let in the
robins, who would hop on the table to pick up crumbs. The quantity of
singing birds was very great, for the farmers and gardeners were less
cruel and avaricious than they are now--though poorer. They allowed our
pretty songsters to share in the bounties of providence. The
shortsighted cruelty, which is too prevalent now, brings its own
punishment, for, owing to the reckless destruction of birds, the
equilibrium of nature is disturbed, insects increase to such an extent
as materially to affect every description of crop. This summer (1872),
when I was at Sorrento, even the olives, grapes, and oranges were
seriously injured by the caterpillars--a disaster which I entir