The actual school work was a delight, with glimpses into new fields: chemistry, where we saw samples of aluminum, a metal which might some day become very useful; geology, with a long trip on the street car miles and miles into the country to the State University at Berkeley, where Professor Le Conte told us most interesting things—geology, gently tuned by Professor Thomas Heaton to meet the exigencies of Mosaic “days of creation,” and yet opening the mind to questionings. There was also Cicero and an introduction into the German language and English literature. I even read the whole of Paradise Lost. Then, bad eyes, and a verdict of never any more school, not even sight enough for sewing! But oculists don’t know everything always.
And so I came home. In the house were many books,—always had been so long as I could remember. The rigid Maine rule of semi-annual house-cleaning held sway, and it was often my task to take out, beat, dust and replace all the volumes in the capacious bookcases. There were essays, histories, biographies: sets of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Hawthorne, Scott, besides scattered novels; Shakespeare was there and a few other dramatists, all the standard poets, Cervantes and Plutarch. These were not only dusted, but read to a great or less extent.
Harper’s Magazine, with its buff cover adorned with cupids, cornucopias, fruits and flowers, was a regular visitor, as was the Century later. I recall the laughter of a family reading of Frank Stockton’s The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine. The Congre
