Since I loved to sing and imagined myself a poet, this volume appeared to be the perfect beginning. But when I asked my mother over and over to explain what the poet meant by, 'Ha! Whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie"' and 'Sal-alkali o'midge-tail clippings' my mother gently suggested I move on.
"I did. To Volume 29, Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. But when I learned on page one that the Beagle wasn't the four-legged variety, but a 'ten-gun brig in her Majesty's Navy,' and page two described 'singular encrustations, atmospheric dust with infusoria, and the causes of a discolured sea,' my interest vanished.
"Discouraged, but not defeated, I followed my mother's not-so-gentle suggestion to move on to Volume 17: Aesop, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen's Folklore and Fable. I loved it from the start, even though it caused me considerable concern. I worried about Hansel and Grethel, Little Red Cap and all the rest. How could a father lead his children into the forest and leave them? How could a mother let a little girl go off alone to visit her ailing grandmother? And what about Snow White? What was she thinking of when she neglected to invite the dwarves to her wedding? I was bitterly disappointed, so I wrote my own endings.
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