Page:My father as I recall him (IA cu31924013473610).djvu/19

 here, when a child, and a very sickly child, poor little fellow, that he found in an old spare room a store of books, among which were "Roderick Random," "Peregrine Pickle," "Humphrey Clinker," "Tom Jones," "The Vicar of Wakefield," "Don Quixote," "Gil Bias," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Arabian Nights," and other volumes. "They were," as Mr. Forster wrote, "a host of friends when he had no single friend." And it was while living at Chatham that he first saw "Gad's Hill."

As a "very queer small boy" he used to walk up to the house—it stood on the summit of a high hill—on holidays, or when his heart ached for a "great treat." He would stand and look at it, for as a little fellow he had a wonderful liking and admiration for the house, and it was, to him, like no other house he had ever seen. He would walk up and down before it with his father, gazing at it with delight, and the latter would tell him that perhaps if he