For my own part I believe I have never got any good from a book that I did not read lawlessly and wilfully, out of all leading and following, and merely because I wanted to read it; and I here make bold to praise that way of doing.  The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.  It may happen that it will yield you an unexpected delight, but this will be in its own unentreated way and in spite of your good intentions.  Little of the book read for a purpose stays with the reader, and this is one reason why reading for review is so vain and unprofitable.  I have done a vast deal of this, but I have usually been aware that the book was subtly withholding from me the best a book can give, since I was not reading it for its own sake and because I loved it, but for selfish ends of my own, and because I wished to possess myself of it for business purposes, as it were.  The reading that does one good, and lasting good, is the reading that one does for pleasure, and simply and unselfishly, as children do.  Art will still withhold herself from thrift, and she does well, for nothing but love has any right to her.

Little remains of the events of any period, however vivid they were in passing.  The memory may hold record of everything, as it is believed, but it will not be easily entreated to give up its facts, and I find myself striving in vein to recall the things that I must have read that year in the country.  Probably I read the old things over; certainly I kept on with Cervantes, and very likely with Goldsmith.  There was a delightful history of Ohio, stuffed with tales of the pioneer times, which was a good deal in the hands of us boys; and there was a book of Western Adventure, full of Indian fights and captivities, which we wore to pieces.  Still, I think that it was now that I began to have a literary sense of what I was reading.  I wrote a diary, and I tried to give its record form and style, but mostly failed.  The versifying which I was always at was easier, and yielded itself more to my hand.  I should be very glad to, know at present what it dealt with.

VIII.  LIGHTER FANCIES

When my uncles changed their minds in regard to colonizing their families at the mills, as they did in about a year, it became necessary for my father to look about for some new employment, and he naturally looked in the old direction.  There were several schemes for getting hold of this paper and that, and there were offers that came to nothing.  In that day there were few salaried editors in the country outside of New York, and the only hope we could have was of some place as printers in an office which we might finally buy.  The affair ended in our going to the State capital, where my father found work as a reporter of legislative proceedings for one of the daily journals, and I was taken into the office as a compositor.  In this way I came into living contact