"I am afraid," I remarked quite _en passant_, "that I shall be embarrassed not by my ignorance, but by my knowledge concerning your life. For it is difficult to ask with good grace about what you already know. I am aware, for instance, that you were born at Martin's Ferry, Ohio, March 11, 1837; that you removed thence to Dayton, and a few years later to Jefferson, Ashtabula County; that your father edited, published, and printed a country newspaper of Republican complexion, and that you spent a good part of your early years in the printing office. Nevertheless, I have some difficulty in realizing the environment of your boyhood." _Howells._ If you have read my "Boy's Town," which is in all essentials autobiographical, you know as much as I could tell you. The environment of my early life was exactly as there described. _Boyesen._ Your father, I should judge, then, was not a strict disciplinarian? _Howells._ No. He was the gentlest of men--a friend and companion to his sons. He guided us in an unobtrusive way without our suspecting it. He was continually putting books into my hands, and they were always good books; many of them became events in my life. I had no end of such literary passions during my boyhood. Among the first was Goldsmith, then came Cervantes and Irving. _Boyesen._ Then there was a good deal of literary atmosphere about your childhood? _Howells._ Yes. I can scarcely remember the time when books did not play a great part in my life. Father was by his culture and his interests rather isolated from the community in which we lived, and this made him and all of us rejoice the more in a new author, in whose world we would live for weeks and months, and who colored our thoughts and conversation. [Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF W. D. HOWELLS AT MARTINS FERRY, OHIO.] _Boyesen._ It has always been a matter of wonder to me that, with so little regular schooling, you stepped full-fledged into literature with such an exquisite and wholly individual style. _Howells._ If you accuse me of that kind of thing, I must leave you to account for it. I had always a passion for literature, and to a boy with a mind and a desire to learn, a printing office is not a bad school. _Boyesen._ How old were you when you left Jefferson, and went to Columbus? _Howells._ I was nineteen years old when I went to the capital and wrote legislative reports for Cincinnati and Cleveland papers; afterwards I became one of the editors of the "Ohio State Journal." My duties gradually took a wide range, and I edited the literary column and wrote many of the leading articles. I was then in the midst of my enthusiasm for Heine, and was so impregnated with his spirit, that a poem which I sent to the "Atlantic Monthly" was mistaken by Mr. Lowell for a translation from the German poet. When he had satisfied himself, however, that it was not a translation, he accepted and printed it.