“I guess if Sue Wright recommends ’em they won’t hurt us any.”

“Ayes!  I ain’t afraid—­we’ll wade into ’em,” she answered recklessly.  “Ayes! we’ll see what they’re about.”

Aunt Deel began with The Stolen Child.  She read slowly and often paused for comment or explanation or laughter or to touch the corner of an eye with a corner of her handkerchief in moments when we were all deeply moved by the misfortunes of our favorite characters, which were acute and numerous.  Often she stopped to spell out phrases of French or Latin, whereupon Uncle Peabody would exclaim: 

“Call it ‘snags’ and go on.”

The “snags” were numerous in certain of the books we read, in which case Uncle Peabody would exclaim: 

“Say, that’s purty rough plowin’.  Mebbe you better move into another field.”

How often I have heard Aunt Deel reading when the effect was like this: 

“The Duchess exclaimed with an accent which betrayed the fact that she had been reared in the French Capital:  ‘Snags!’ Whereupon Sir Roger rejoined in French equally patrician:  ’Snags!”

Those days certain authors felt it necessary to prove that their education had not been neglected or forgotten.  Their way was strewn with fragments of classic lore intended to awe and mystify the reader, while evidences of correct religious sentiment were dropped, here and there, to reassure him.  The newspapers and magazines of the time, like certain of its books, were salted with little advertisements of religion, and virtue and honesty and thrift.

In those magazines we read of the great West—­“the poor man’s paradise”—­“the stoneless land of plenty”; of its delightful climate, of the ease with which the farmer prospered on its rich soil.  Uncle Peabody spoke playfully of going West, after that, but Aunt Deel made no answer and concealed her opinion on that subject for a long time.  As for myself, the reading had deepened my interest in east and west and north and south and in the skies above them.  How mysterious and inviting they had become!

One evening a neighbor had brought the Republican from the post-office.  I opened it and read aloud these words, in large type at the top of the page: 

     Silas Wright Elected to the U.S.  Senate.

“Well I want to know!” Uncle Peabody exclaimed.  “That would make me forgit it if I was goin’ to be hung.  Go on and read what it says.”

I read of the choosing of our friend for the seat made vacant by the resignation of William L. Marcy, who had been elected governor, and the part which most impressed us were these words from a letter of Mr. Wright to Azariah Flagg of Albany, written when the former was asked to accept the place: 

“I am too young and too poor for such an elevation.  I have not had the experience in that great theater of politics to qualify me for a place so exalted and responsible.  I prefer therefore the humbler position which I now occupy.”

“That’s his way,” said Uncle Peabody.  “They had hard work to convince him that he knew enough to be Surrogate.”