As one grew to think out life for one's self, one came to perceive a width and sanctity in the choice of work--whether rhetoric or art, theology or sculpture, hydraulics or manufacture--but to _work_, to work hard, to see work steadily, and see it whole, was the way to be reputable. I think I always respected a good blacksmith more than a lady of leisure. I know it took me a while to recover from a very youthful and amusing disinclination to rich people, which was surely never trained into me, but grew like the fruit of the horse-chestnut trees, ruggedly, of nature, and of Andover Hill; and which dropped away when its time came--just about as useless as the big brown nuts which we cut into baskets and carved into Trustees' faces for a mild November day, and then threw away. When I came in due time to observe that property and a hardened character were not identical, and that families of ease in which one might happen to visit were not deficient in education because their incomes were large--I think it was at first with a certain sense of surprise. It is impossible to convey to one differently reared the delicious _naïveté_ of this state of mind. Whatever the "personal peculiarities" of our youthful conceptions of life, as acquired at Andover, one thing is sure--that we grew into love of reality as naturally as the Seminary elms shook out their long, green plumes in May, and shed their delicate, yellow leaves in October. I can remember no time when we did not instinctively despise a sham, and honor a genuine person, thing, or claim. In mere social pretension not built upon character, intelligence, education, or gentle birth, we felt no interest. I do not remember having been taught this, in so many words. It came without teaching. My father taught me most things without text-books or lessons. By far the most important portion of what one calls education, I owe to him; yet he never preached, or prosed, or played the pedagogue. He talked a great deal, not to us, but with us; we began to have conversation while we were still playing marbles and dolls. I remember hours of discussion with him on some subject so large that the littleness of his interlocutor must have tried him sorely. Time and eternity, theology and science, literature and art, invention and discovery came each in its turn; and, while I was still making burr baskets, or walking fences, or coasting (standing up) on what I was proud to claim as the biggest sled in town, down the longest hills, and on the fastest local record--I was fascinated with the wealth and variety which seem to have been the conditions of thought with him. I have never been more _interested_ by anything in later life than I was in my father's conversation.