That soft habit of becoming fondly attached to associations, which made me weep on leaving St. Asaph, Ffynnon Beuno, Brynford, Liverpool, and even the ‘Windermere,’ made me cling to my attic room in the house of Mrs. Williams. My increase of pay enabled me to secure a larger and more comfortable room; but, detesting change, I remained its occupant. My self-denial was compensated, however, by a fine surplus of dollars, with which I satisfied a growing desire for books. So far, all the story-books I had read, beyond the fragments found in School-readers, consisted of that thrilling romance about Enoch and his brothers, a novelette called ‘First Footsteps in Evil,’ ‘Kaloolah,’ by Dr. Mayo, which I had found at Ffynnon Beuno, and ‘Ivanhoe,’ in three volumes, at which I had furtively glanced as it lay open in my cousin’s study at Brynford. Through the influence of cheap copies of standard books, millions of readers in America have been educated, at slight cost, in the best productions of English authors; and when these have been delegated to the second-hand bookstalls, it is wonderful what a library one can possess at a trifling expense. There was such a stall existing conveniently near St. Thomas Street, which I daily passed; and I could never resist fingering the books, and snatching brief delights from their pages. As soon as my wardrobe was established, I invested my surplus in purchases of this description, and the bookseller, seeing a promising customer in me, allowed me some latitude in my selection, and even catered to my tastes. The state of the binding mattered little; it was the contents that fascinated me. My first prize that I took home was Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall,’ in four volumes, because it was associated with Brynford lessons. I devoured it now for its own sake. Little by little, I acquired Spenser’s ‘Faery Queen,’ Tasso’s ‘Jerusalem Delivered,’ Pope’s ‘Iliad,’ Dryden’s ‘Odyssey,’ ‘Paradise Lost,’ Plutarch’s ‘Lives.’ Simplicius on Epictetus, a big ‘History of the United States,’ the last of which I sadly needed, because of my utter ignorance of the country I was in.