The children did not wish me to read the books they desired
their mother to read, and I usually took some such book as "Hereward the
Wake," or "Guy Mannering," or "The Last of the Mohicans" or else some
story about a man-eating tiger, or a man-eating lion, from one of the
hunting books in my library. These latter stories were always favorites,
and as the authors told them in the first person, my interested auditors
grew to know them by the name of the "I" stories, and regarded them as
adventures all of which happened to the same individual. When Selous,
the African hunter, visited us, I had to get him to tell to the younger
children two or three of the stories with which they were already
familiar from my reading; and as Selous is a most graphic narrator, and
always enters thoroughly into the feeling not only of himself but of
the opposing lion or buffalo, my own rendering of the incidents was cast
entirely into the shade.
Besides profiting by the more canonical books on education, we profited
by certain essays and articles of a less orthodox type. I wish to
express my warmest gratitude for such books--not of avowedly didactic
purpose--as Laura Richards's books, Josephine Dodge Daskam's "Madness of
Philip," Palmer Cox's "Queer People," the melodies of Father Goose and
Mother Wild Goose, Flandreau's "Mrs.
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