Of the American writers Longfellow has been most a passion with me, as the English, and German, and Spanish, and Russian writers have been.  I am sure that this was largely by mere chance.  It was because I happened, in such a frame and at such a time, to come upon his books that I loved them above those of other men as great.  I am perfectly sensible that Lowell and Emerson outvalue many of the poets and prophets I have given my heart to; I have read them with delight and with a deep sense of their greatness, and yet they have not been my life like those other, those lesser, men.  But none of the passions are reasoned, and I do not try to account for my literary preferences or to justify them.

I dragged along through several months of that winter, and did my best to carry out that notable scheme of not minding my vertigo.  I tried doing half-work, and helping my father with the correspondence, but when it appeared that nothing would avail, he remained in charge of it, till the close of the session, and I went home to try what a complete and prolonged rest would do for me.  I was not fit for work in the printing-office, but that was a simpler matter than the literary work that was always tempting me.  I could get away from it only by taking my gun and tramping day after day through the deep, primeval woods.  The fatigue was wholesome, and I was so bad a shot that no other creature suffered loss from my gain except one hapless wild pigeon.  The thawing snow left the fallen beechnuts of the autumn before uncovered among the dead leaves, and the forest was full of the beautiful birds.  In most parts of the middle West they are no longer seen, except in twos or threes, but once they were like the sands of the sea for multitude.  It was not now the season when they hid half the heavens with their flight day after day; but they were in myriads all through the woods, where their iridescent breasts shone like a sudden untimely growth of flowers when you came upon them from the front.  When they rose in fright, it was like the upward leap of fire, and with the roar of flame.  I use images which, after all, are false to the thing I wish to express; but they must serve.  I tried honestly enough to kill the pigeons, but I had no luck, or too much, till I happened to bring down one of a pair that I found apart from the rest in a softy tree-top.  The poor creature I had widowed followed me to the verge of the woods, as I started home with my prey, and I do not care to know more personally the feelings of a murderer than I did then.  I tried to shoot the bird, but my aim was so bad that I could not do her this mercy, and at last she flew away, and I saw her no more.