Catherine remembers my mother crying, when she heard of my grandmother's
death. Also when at Parkfield how Aunt Sarah and Aunt Kitty used to
receive her. Susan, like me, only remembers affairs personal. It is
sufficiently odd this [difference] in subjects remembered. Catherine
says she does not remember the impression made upon her by external
things, as scenery, but for things which she reads she has an excellent
memory, i.e., for ideas. Now her sympathy being ideal, it is part of her
character, and shows how easily her kind of memory was stamped, a vivid
thought is repeated, a vivid impression forgotten.
I remember obscurely the illumination after the battle of Waterloo,
and the Militia exercising about that period, in the field opposite our
house.
1817.
At 8 1/2 years old I went to Mr. Case's School. (Chapter I/3. A
day-school at Shrewsbury kept by Rev. G. Case, minister of the Unitarian
Chapel ("Life and Letters," Volume I., page 27 et seq.)) I remember how
very much I was afraid of meeting the dogs in Barker Street, and how
at school I could not get up my courage to fight. I was very timid by
nature. I remember I took great delight at school in fishing for
newts in the quarry pool. I had thus young formed a strong taste
for collecting, chiefly seals, franks, etc., but also pebbles and
minerals--one which was given me by some boy decided this taste. I
believe shortly after this, or before, I had smattered in botany, and
certainly when at Mr. Case's School I was very fond of gardening, and
invented some great falsehoods about being able to colour crocuses as I
liked. (Chapter I./4. The story is given in the "Life and Letters," I.,
page 28, the details being slightly different.) At this time I felt very
strong friendship for some boys. It was soon after I began collecting
stones, i.e., when 9 or 10, that I distinctly recollect the desire I had
of being able to know something about every pebble in front of the hall
door--it was my earliest and only geological aspiration at that time.
I was in those days a very great story-teller--for the pure pleasure of
exciting attention and surprise. I stole fruit and hid it for these same
motives, and injured trees by barking them for similar ends. I scarcely
ever went out walking without saying I had seen a pheasant or some
strange bird (natural history taste); these lies, when not detected,
I presume, excited my attention, as I recollect them vividly, not
connected with shame, though some I do, but as something which by having
produced a great effect on my mind, gave pleasure like a tragedy. I
recollect when I was at Mr. Case's inventing a whole fabric to show how
fond I was of speaking the TRUTH! My invention is still so vivid in my
mind, that I could almost fancy it was true, did not memory of former
shame tell me it was false. I have no particularly happy or unhappy
recollections of this time or earlier periods of my life. I remember
well a walk I took with a boy named Ford across some fields to a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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