The next morning Mr. Carlisle put into my hand, with great delicacy, such a sum as I had never before possessed, telling me that I "would need it for travelling expenses." All the while he drew me out on literature. On the Long Island Sound steamer he bade me notice a young gentleman (whom I was destined to know in after years), a man with curly hair and very foppish air, accompanied by a page "in an eruption of buttons," and told me that it was N. P. Willis. And so revelling in romance and travel, with mince-pie and turkey for my daily food, my pocket stuffed with money, in the most refined and elegant literary society (at least it was there on deck), I came to Philadelphia. I may here say that the memory of Mr. Carlisle has made me through all my life kinder to boys than I might otherwise have been; and if, as a teacher, I have been popular among them, it was to a great degree due to his influence. For, as will appear in many passages in this book, I have to a strange degree the habit of thinking over marked past experiences, and drawing from them precedents by which to guide my conduct; hence it has often happened that a single incident has shown itself in hundreds of others, as a star is reflected in countless pools. II. BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 1837-1845. Return to Philadelphia at twelve years of age--Early discipline--School at Mr. C. Walker's--B. P. Hunt--My first reading of Rabelais--Mr. Robert Stewart--Hurlbut's school--Boyish persecution--Much strange reading--Francois Villon--Early studies in philosophy--Transcendentalism and its influence--Spanish--School of E. C. Wines--The French teacher--Long illness--The intelligent horse--Princeton University professors--Albert Dodd and James Alexander--College life--Theology--Rural scenes--Reading--My first essays--The Freshman rebellion--Smoking--George H. Boker--Jacob Behmen or Bohme--Stonington--Captain Nat Palmer and Commodore Vanderbilt--My graduation.