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Afterward this story was embossed, and I read it again and again until I almost knew it by heart; and all through my childhood "Little Lord Fauntleroy" was my sweet and gentle companion. I have ventured to give the details connected with the reading of this story at the risk of being tedious, because they are in such vivid contrast to my vague, mutable and confused memories of earlier reading.

Feasting on Tales as Reading Became Easy

FROM "Little Lord Fauntleroy" I date the beginning of my true interest in books. During the next two years I read many books at my home and on my visits to Boston. I cannot remember what they all were, or in what order I read them; but I know that among them were "Greek Heroes," La Fontaine's "Fables," Hawthorne's "Wonder-Book," "Bible Stories," Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare," "A Child's History of England," by Dickens, "The Arabian Nights," "The Swiss Family Robinson," "Pilgrim's Progress," "Robinson Crusoe," "Little Women," and "Heidi," a beautiful little story which I afterward read in German. I read them in the intervals between study and play with an ever-deepening sense of pleasure. I did not study nor analyze them -- I did not know whether they were well written or not; I never thought about style or authorship. They laid their rich treasures at my feet, and I accepted them, as we accept the sunshine and the love of our friends. I loved "Little Women" because it gave me a sense of kinship with girls and boys who could see and hear. Circumscribed as my life was in so many ways, I had to look between the covers of books for news of the world that lay outside my own.

I did not care especially for "Pilgrim's Progress," which I think I did not finish, or for the "Fables." I read La Fontaine's "Fables" first in an English translation, and enjoyed them only after a half-hearted fashion. Later I read the book again in French, and I found that, in spite of the vivid word-pictures and the wonderful mastery of language, I liked it no better. I do not know why it is, but stories in which animals are made to talk and act like human beings have never appealed to me very strongly. The ludicrous caricatures of the animals often occupy my mind to the exclusion of the "moral."

Then, again, La Fontaine seldom, if ever, appeals to our higher moral sense. The highest chords he strikes are those of reason and self-love. Through all the "Fables" runs the thought that man's morality springs wholly from self-love, and that if that self-love is directed and restrained by reason, happiness must follow as surely as the day follows the night. Now, so far as I can judge, self-love is the root of all evil; but, of course, I may be wrong, for La Fontaine had greater opportunities of observing men than I am likely ever to have. I do not object so much to the cynical and satirical fables as to those in which momentous truths are taught by monkeys and foxes.

But I love "The Jungle-Book" and "Wild Animals I Have Known." I feel a genuine interest in the animals themselves because they are real animals and not caricatures of men. One sympathizes with their loves and hatreds, laughs over their comedies, and weeps over their tragedies. And if they point a moral it is so subtle that we are not conscious of it.

Enjoying the Riches of Greek Classics

MY MIND opened naturally and joyously to a conception of antiquity. Greece, ancient Greece, exercised a mysterious fascination over me. In my fancy the pagan gods and goddesses still walked on earth and talked face to face with men, and in my heart I secretly built shrines to those I loved best. I knew and loved the whole tribe of nymphs and heroes and demigods -- no, not quite all, for the cruelty and greed of Medea and Jason were too monstrous to be forgiven, and I used to wonder why the gods permitted them to do wrong and then punished them for their wickedness. And the mystery is still unsolved. I often wonder how

"God can dumbness keep
While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time."

It was the "Iliad" that made Greece my Paradise. I was familiar with the story of Troy before I read it in the original, and consequently I had little difficulty in making the Greek words surrender their treasures after I had passed the border-land of grammar. Great poetry, whether written in Greek or in English, needs no other interpreter than a responsive heart. Would that the host of those who make the great works of the poets odious by their analyses, impositions and laborious comments might learn this simple truth! It is not necessary that one should be able to define every word and give its principal parts and its grammatical position in the sentence in order to understand and appreciate a fine poem. I know my learned professors have found greater riches in the "Iliad" than I shall ever find; but I am not avaricious. I am content that others should be wiser than I. But with all their wide and comprehensive knowledge they cannot measure their enjoyment of that splendid epic, nor can I. When I read the finest passages of the "Iliad" I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten -- my world lies upward; the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine!