Page:The Fun of It.pdf/18

6 Youth’s Companion of a generation past fell be­ fore my onslaught, as well as forgotten books like Dr. Syntax. On the crowded shelves I also found waiting for me the so-called children’s books of fifty years ago, where very good little boys and girls always emerged triumphant over very bad little boys and girls.

I go back now to few of the books I read as a child since without a feeling of disappointment. Whether this is in the books, or in me, I do not know. I suppose mine is a repetition of the expe­rience of the elderly gentleman who returned to his native country after many years abroad to taste the cherries he was so fond of as a boy. Of course, he found that they were no better than those he had been eating regularly in other parts of the world. And everyone over thirty understands this. Note: This point is not important enough to wish to be thirty to understand.

Books have meant much to me. Not only did I myself read considerably, but Mother read aloud to my sister and me, early and late. So fundamental became the habit that on occasions when we girls had to do housework, instead of both pitching in and doing it together, one was selected to read aloud and the other to work.

At one time I thought that my father must have read everything and, of course, therefore, knew everything. He could define the hardest words as well as the dictionary and we used to try to trip him and he to bewilder us. I still have a letter he