In this
case, too, I doubtless contributed my share to that stream of
admiration which our generation so generously poured forth for
the self-made man. I was consumed by a wistful desire to
apprehend the hardships of my father's earlier life in that
faraway time when he had been a miller's apprentice. I knew that
he still woke up punctually at three o'clock because for so many
years he had taken his turn at the mill in the early morning, and
if by chance I awoke at the same hour, as curiously enough I
often did, I imagined him in the early dawn in my uncle's old
mill reading through the entire village library, book after book,
beginning with the lives of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence. Copies of the same books, mostly bound in
calfskin, were to be found in the library below, and I
courageously resolved that I too would read them all and try to
understand life as he did. I did in fact later begin a course of
reading in the early morning hours, but I was caught by some
fantastic notion of chronological order and early legendary form.
Pope's translation of the "Iliad," even followed by Dryden's
"Virgil," did not leave behind the residuum of wisdom for which I
longed, and I finally gave them up for a thick book entitled "The
History of the World" as affording a shorter and an easier path.
Pages:
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36