I was always reading and mentally reviewing. If my mother made a call, I was at once absorbed in the first book which came to hand. Thus I can remember that one summer, when we came to Dr. Stimson's, during the brief interval of our being shown into the "parlour," I seized on a Unitarian literary magazine and read the story of Osapho, the Egyptian who trained parrots to cry, "Osapho is a god!" Also an article on Chinese acupuncture with needles to cure rheumatism; which chance readings and reminiscences I could multiply _ad infinitum_. My cousin Caroline, whom I remember as very beautiful and refined, with a _distinguee_ manner, had a small work-box, on the cover of which was a picture of the Pavilion in Brighton. She spoke of the building as a rubbishy piece of architecture; but I, who felt it through the "Arabian Nights," admired it, and pitied her want of taste. _Now_ I have lived altogether three years in Brighton, but I never saw the Pavilion without recalling the little yellow work-box. In some mysterious way the picture seems to me to be grander than the original. Dickens has expressed this idea. I was too grave and earnest as a child to be called a cheerful or happy one, which was partly due to much ill-health; yet, by a strange contradiction not uncommon in America, I was gifted with a precociously keen sense of humour, and not only read, but collected and preserved every comic almanac and scrap of droll anecdote which I could get. Thus there came into my possession half-a-dozen books of the broadest London humour of the time, all of which entered into my soul; such things as:-- '"Ladies in furs and gemmen in spurs, Who lollop and lounge all day; The Bazaar in Soho is completely the go, Walk into the shop of Grimaldi." Reader mine, you can have no conception how deeply I, as a mere little boy, entered into and knew London life and society from such songs, sketches, anecdotes, books, and caricatures as I met with. Others read and forget them, but I took such trifles deep into my soul and _dwelt_ on them. It is only of late years, since I have lived in England, that I have learned how extensively--I may say incredibly well--I was informed for my age as to many phases of English life. Few of us know what may be got out of reading the current light literature of the day, if we only read it _earnestly_ and get it by heart. This I did to a great extent, as my reminiscences continually awakened in England prove.