I was now about eleven years old, but these emotions and impressions which I have just described could not have been stronger or more distinct at an older age.  There were two immediate results of my forced loneliness:  I began to find company in books, and greater pleasure in music.  I made the former discovery through a big, gilt-bound, illustrated copy of the Bible, which used to lie in splendid neglect on the center table in our little parlor.  On top of the Bible lay a photograph album.  I had often looked at the pictures in the album, and one day, after taking the larger book down and opening it on the floor, I was overjoyed to find that it contained what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of pictures.  I looked at these pictures many times; in fact, so often that I knew the story of each one without having to read the subject, and then, somehow, I picked up the thread of history on which are strung the trials and tribulations of the Hebrew children; this I followed with feverish interest and excitement.  For a long time King David, with Samson a close second, stood at the head of my list of heroes; he was not displaced until I came to know Robert the Bruce.  I read a good portion of the Old Testament, all that part treating of wars and rumors of wars, and then started in on the New.  I became interested in the life of Christ, but became impatient and disappointed when I found that, notwithstanding the great power he possessed, he did not make use of it when, in my judgment, he most needed to do so.  And so my first general impression of the Bible was what my later impression has been of a number of modern books, that the authors put their best work in the first part, and grew either exhausted or careless toward the end.

After reading the Bible, or those parts which held my attention, I began to explore the glass-doored bookcase which I have already mentioned.  I found there Pilgrim’s Progress, Peter Parley’s History of the United States, Grimm’s Household Stories, Tales of a Grandfather, a bound volume of an old English publication (I think it was called The Mirror), a little volume called Familiar Science, and somebody’s Natural Theology, which last, of course, I could not read, but which, nevertheless, I tackled, with the result of gaining a permanent dislike for all kinds of theology.  There were several other books of no particular name or merit, such as agents sell to people who know nothing of buying books.  How my mother came by this little library which, considering all things, was so well suited to me I never sought to know.  But she was far from being an ignorant woman and had herself, very likely, read the majority of these books, though I do not remember ever seeing her with a book in her hand, with the exception of the Episcopal Prayer book.  At any rate she encouraged in me the habit of reading, and when I had about exhausted those books in the little library which interested me, she began to buy books for me.  She also regularly gave me money to buy a weekly paper which was then very popular for boys.