Don't You Think
All That Romantic Stuff Will Take Your Mind Off Your Studies?"
Now he'll flare up, said I to myself; he's so confoundedly independent
and touchy no one can say a word to him.
It surprised me when he
answered quietly, "Yes, mother, I know, but I must finish this book
now; it will be the last novel I shall read for some years." And so it
was, I believe.
His resolution impressed us even more in another matter. He had an
extraordinary talent for inventing stories, mostly of wars and wild
adventures with plenty of fighting in them, and whenever we boys were
all together, which was usually after we had gone to bed and put the
candle out, he would begin one of his wonderful tales and go on for
hours, we all wide awake, listening in breathless silence. At length
towards midnight the flow of the narrative would suddenly stop, and
after an interval we would all begin to cry out to him to go on. "Oh,
you are awake!" he would exclaim, with a chuckle of laughter. "Very
well, then, you know just where we are in our history, to be resumed
another day. Now you can go to sleep." On the following evening he
would take up the tale, which would often last an entire week, to be
followed by another just as long, then another, and so on-our thousand
and one nights. And this delightful yarn-spinning was also dropped as
he became more and more absorbed in his mathematical and other
studies.
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