But our beast friends were many.  The yellow yard-dog always slobbered joyfully at our approach; partly moved, I fancy, by love for us, and partly by the exciting hope of being let off his chain.  When we went into the farmyard the fowls came running to our feet for corn, the pigeons fluttered down over our heads for peas, and the pigs humped themselves against the wall of the sty as tightly as they could lean, in hopes of having their backs scratched.  The long sweet faces of the plough horses, as they turned in the furrows, were as familiar to us as the faces of any other labourers in our father’s fields, and we got fond of the lambs and ducks and chickens, and got used to their being killed and eaten when our acquaintance reached a certain date, like other farm-bred folk, which is one amongst the many proofs of the adaptability of human nature.

So far so good, on my part as well as Jem’s.  That I should like the animals “on the place”—­the domesticated animals, the workable animals, the eatable animals—­this was right and natural, and befitting my father’s son.  But my far greater fancy for wild, queer, useless, mischievous, and even disgusting creatures often got me into trouble.  Want of sympathy became absolute annoyance as I grew older, and wandered farther, and adopted a perfect menagerie of odd beasts in whom my friends could see no good qualities:  such as the snake I kept warm in my trousers-pocket; the stickleback that I am convinced I tamed in its own waters; the toad for whom I built a red house of broken drainpipes at the back of the strawberry bed, where I used to go and tickle his head on the sly; and the long-whiskered rat in the barn, who knew me well, and whose death nearly broke my heart, though I had seen generations of unoffending ducklings pass to the kitchen without a tear.

I think it must have been the beasts that made me take to reading:  I was so fond of Buffon’s Natural History, of which there was an English abridgment on the dining-room bookshelves.

But my happiest reading days began after the bookseller’s agent came round, and teased my father into taking in the Penny Cyclopaedia; and those numbers in which there was a beast, bird, fish, or reptile were the numbers for me!

I must, however, confess that if a love for reading had been the only way in which I had gone astray from the family habits and traditions, I don’t think I should have had much to complain of in the way of blame.

My father “pish"ed and “pshaw"ed when he caught me “poking over” books, but my dear mother was inclined to regard me as a genius, whose learning might bring renown of a new kind into the family.  In a quiet way of her own, as she went gently about household matters, or knitted my father’s stockings, she was a great day-dreamer—­one of the most unselfish kind, however; a builder of air-castles, for those she loved to dwell in; planned, fitted, and furnished according to the measure of her affections.