Part 6 (1/2)

I re on the 26th of May, when the far their corn

What books I read that summer I cannot recall Yes, I recall one--”The Coht of a peddler, and upon which Iothers to a Roxbury girl for whoirl I wrote to her, and a ridiculously stiff, formal, and aard letter it was, I assure you I am positive I addressed her as ”Dear Madam,” and started off with some sentence from ”The Complete Letter-Writer,” so i, and that the book pointed it out Mary's reply was, ”To otten friend,” and was siirls' letters usually are My Grandfather Kelly died that season, and I recall that I wrote a letter of condolence to my people, modeled upon one in the book How absurd and stilted and unreal it must have sounded to them!

Oh, how crude and callow and obtuse I was at that tis, but undisciplined, uninforh me down I was extremely bashful, had no social aptitude, and was likely to stutter when anxious or eood impression

I was much liked in school and out, and was fairly happy I seem to see sunshi+ne over all when I look back there But it was a long summer to me I had never been from home more than a day or two at a time before, and I became very ho the road, or to see the old hills again--what a Joy it would have been! But I stuck it out tillfellow froirls I fancied) with es, over fifty dollars, and with this I planned to paycounty of Greene, during the co winter ter the thirty miles with Father, atop a load of butter It was the time of year when the farmers took their butter to Catskill Father usually made two trips

This was the first one of the season, and I accompanied him as far as Ashland, where the Institute was located

I reth of the winter term, and studied fairly hard I had a room by myself and enjoyed the life with the two hundred or eoic, wrote compositions, and declaimed in the chapel, as the rules required It was at this time that I first read Milton We had to parse in ”Paradise Lost,” and I recall hoas shocked and astonished by that celestial warfare I told one of, delicate, wide-eyed man who in later life became well known as Bishop Hurst, of the Methodist Church He heard our s, in a room that was never quite warmed by the newly kindled fire I don't kno I caic (Whately's) I had never heard of such a study before; ot little out of it What an absurd study, taught, as it was, as an aid to argu to hiument, or of one weak one, in terms of common sense, is worth any araht--all preposterous studies viewed as helps toward correct writing and speaking Think of our parsing Milton as an aid to e!

I reh in composition--only one boy in the school ahead of me, and that was Herman coons, to whom I became much attached, and who beca the holiday vacation After leaving school we corresponded for several years, and then lost track of each other I do not know that there is one ofI know of none that became eminent in any field One of the boys was fatally injured that winter while coasting I re to him He died in a feeeks

It was an event when Father and Mother caht me some mince pies What feasts two or three other boys and I had inwe had a public debate in the chapel, and I was chosen as one of the disputants We debated the question of the Criland and France against Russia Our side won I think I spoke very well I reot azine,” probably by Dr Osgood

It seeot much of his ammunition from the same source, and, as I spoke first, there was not reatly es one re e had all gathered in chapel for prayers, none of the professors appeared on the platfor for us was not one of his duties, he hurried off to find soled

In the spring of 1855, with eight or ten dollars in my pocket which Father had advanced me, I made my first visit to New York by steamer from Catskill, on my way to New Jersey in quest of a position as school-teacher Three of our neighborhood boys were then teaching in or near Plainfield, and I sought the my first ride on the cars on that trip fro for the train to start, I re would be so sudden as to jerk my hat off!

I was too late to find a vacancy in any of the schools in the districts I visited On one occasion I walked froe where there was a vacancy, but the trustees, after lookingand inexperienced for their large school That night the occultation of Venus by the

On my return in May I stopped in New York and spent a day prowling about the second-hand bookstalls, and spent so h left to carry ht Locke's ”Essay on the Hu,” Dr

Johnson's works, Saint-Pierre's ”Studies of Nature,” and dick's works and others dick was a Scottish philosopher whose two big fat voluht ot little from him and soon laid him aside On this and other trips to New York I was always drawn by the second-hand bookstalls How I hovered about theood the books looked, hoanted the them, the spirit of those days lays its hand upon , half-longing, run over the titles Nearly all lish classics I have picked up at these curbstone stalls How much more they mean to me than new books of later years! Here, for instance, are two volu, library style, which I have carried with me from one place to another for over fifty years, and which in my youth I read and reread, and the style of which I tried to imitate before I enty When I dip into ”The Rambler” and ”The Idler” no dry and stilted and artificial their balanced sentences seem! yet I treasure them for what they once were to o (in 1860), I said that Johnson's periods acted like a lever of the third kind, and that the power applied always exceeded the weight raised; and this comparison seems to hit the mark very well I did not read Boswell's Life of hiot the fulcruht place

I reached home on the twentieth of May with an eful of books I rereen, but the air was full of those great ”goose-feather”

flakes of snohich sometimes fall in late May

I stayed home that summer of '55 and worked on the farm, and pored over my books when I had a chance I , but I reht down on ”all fours,” as one has to, to follow Locke

I think it was that summer that I read my first novel, ”Charlotte Temple,” and was fairly intoxicated with it It let loose a flood of e and then going out to work in the hay-field, and how the homely and familiar scenes fairly revolted me I dare say the story took away my taste for Locke and Johnson for a while

In early Septeain turned my face Jerseyward in quest of a school, but stopped on ore The school there, since I had left it, had fared badly One of the teachers the boys had turned out of doors, and the others had ”failed to give satisfaction”; so I was urged to take the school again The trustees offered to double es--twenty-two dollars a ave up the Jersey sche that second terore that I first met Ursula North, who later became my wife Her uncle was one of the trustees of the school, and I presuht her to the place and led to our one on to Jersey in that fall of '55, ht have e faht have been greatly changed It frightens ton life, and Whitman, and ht have gained is, in the scale, like imponderable air

I read my Johnson and Locke that winter and tried to write a little in the Johnsonese buckra man to-day, under the sa novels or theover ”The Raain taking a young felloith ed to Ursula North, and I wrote her a poe home About the middle of April I left home for Cooperstown Seminary I rode to Moresville with Jim Bouton, and as the road between there and Stae could not run, I was co my trunk behind Froht ride by stage