"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.
To this day I can recall portions of those tales, especially those in
which birds and beasts instead of men were the actors, and so much did
we miss them that sometimes when we were all assembled of an afternoon
we would start begging him for a story - -"just one more, and the
longer the better," we would say to tempt him. And he, a little
flattered at our keen appreciation of his talent as a yarn-spinner,
would appear inclined to yield. "Well, now, what story shall I tell
you?" he would say; and then, just when we were settling down to
listen, he would shout, "No, no, no more stories," and to put the
matter from him he would snatch up a book and order us to hold our
tongues or clear out of the room!
It was not for me to follow his lead; I had not the intellect or
strength of will for such tasks, and not only on that memorable
evening of my anniversary, but for days afterwards I continued in a
troubled state of mind, ashamed of my ignorance, my indolence, my
disinclination to any kind of mental work-ashamed even to think that
my delight in nature and wish for no other thing in life was merely
due to the fact that while the others were putting away childish
things as they grew up, I alone refused to part with them.
The result of all these deliberations was that I temporized: I would
not, I could not, give up the rides and rambles that took up most of
my time, but I would try to overcome my disinclination to serious
reading. There were plenty of books in the house-it was always a
puzzle to me how we came to have so many. I was familiar with their
appearance on the shelves-they had been before me since I first opened
my eyes - -their shape, size, colour, even their titles, and that was
all I knew about them. A general Natural History and two little works
by James Ronnie on the habits and faculties of birds was all the
literature suited to my wants in the entire collection of three or
four hundred volumes. For the rest, I had read a few story-books and
novels: but we had no novels; when one came into the house it would be
read and lent to our next neighbour five or six miles away, and he in
turn would lend to another, twenty miles further on, and so on until
it disappeared in space.
I made a beginning with Rollin's _Ancient History_ in two huge quarto
volumes; I fancy it was the large clear type and numerous plates which
illustrated it that determined my choice. Rollin, the good old priest,
opened a new wonderful world to me, and instead of the tedious task I
had feared the reading would prove, it was as delightful as it had
formerly been to listen to my brother's endless histories of imaginary
heroes and their wars and adventures.
Still athirst for history, after finishing Rollin I began fingering
other works of that kind: there was Winston's Josephus, too ponderous
a book to be held in the hands when read out of doors; and there was
Gibbon in six stately volumes. I was not yet able to appreciate the
lofty artificial style, and soon fell on something better suited to my
boyish taste in letters - -a History of Christianity in, I think,
sixteen or eighteen volumes of a convenient size. The simple natural
diction attracted me, and I was soon convinced that I could not have
stumbled on more fascinating reading than the lives of the Fathers of
the Church included in some of the earlier volumes, especially that of
Augustine, the greatest of all: how beautiful and marvellous his life
was, and his mother Monica's! what wonderful books he wrote!-his
_Confessions and City of God_ from which long excerpts were given
in this volume.
These biographies sent me to another old book, _Leland on Revelation_,
which told me much I was curious to know about the mythologies and
systems of philosophy of the ancients - the innumerable false cults
which had flourished in a darkened world before the dawn of the true
religion.
Next came _Carlyle's French Revolution_ and at last Gibbon, and I was
still deep in the _Decline and Fall_ when disaster came to us: my
father was practically ruined, owing, as I have said in a former
chapter, to his childlike trust in his fellow-men, and we quitted the
home he had counted as a permanent one, which in due time would have
become his property had he but made his position secure by a proper
deed on first consenting to take over the place in its then ruinous
condition.
Thus ended, sadly enough, the enchanting years of my boyhood; and
here, too, the book should finish: but having gone so far, I will
venture a little further and give a brief account of what followed and
the life which, for several succeeding years, was to be mine - the
life, that is to say, of the mind and spirit.
CHAPTER XXIII
A DARKENED LIFE
A severe illness-Case pronounced hopeless-How it affected me-Religious
doubts and a mind distressed-Lawless thoughts - Conversation with an
old gaucho about religion - George Combe and the desire for
immortality.
