I here recall a favor which Mr. Avery did me. A year or two after I had taken my M. D., my dear old friend Professor Hadley, of Fairfield Medical College, who had been filling the place at Hamilton College pro tem., made me a candidate for the professorship there of chemistry, with geology and natural science. But my old teacher, Mr. Avery, an alumnus of the college, entered the lists and carried the day. I wonder if I should have rusted out there if I had got the place. I must go back to say something of my omnivorous reading, which was, after all, the larger part of my education. I was a reader almost from my cradle, and I read everything I could lay hands on. There was no great choice in my early boyhood. But there was a little subscription library at Sauquoit, the stockholders of which met four times a year, distributed the books by auction to the highest bidder (maximum, perhaps, ten or twelve cents) to have and to hold for three months; or if there was no competition each took what he chose. Rather slow circulation this; but in the three months the books were thoroughly read. History I rather took to, but especially voyages and travels were my delight. There were no plays, not even Shakespeare in the library, but a sprinkling of novels. My novel-reading, up to the time when I was sent to school at Clinton, was confined, I think, to Miss Porter’s “Children of the Abbey” and “Thaddeus of Warsaw”--the latter a soul-stirring production, of which I can recall a good deal; of the former nothing distinctly. One Sunday afternoon, of the first winter I was at Clinton, I went into the public room of one of the two village inns, where half a dozen of the villagers were assembled; and one was reading aloud “Quentin Durward,” which had just appeared in an American (Philadelphia) reprint. This was my introduction to the Waverley novels. The next summer, when at home for farm work, I found “Rob Roy” in the little library I have mentioned, took it out and read it with interest. In the autumn, when I went back to school, some college (Hamilton College) students were boarding at the house where I boarded and lodged. One of them, seeing my avidity for books, introduced me to the librarian of the Phœnix Society of the college, which had a library strong in novels, which I was allowed, one by one, to take home for reading. I suppose that I read them every one.[13]