The effect of this happy illustration was very pleasing, my boy; especially with those who prefer morality to grammar; and after that the physician had the run of all the pious families—our own included. It was a handsome compliment this worthy man paid me when I was about six months old. Having just received from my father the amount of his last bill, he was complacent to the last degree, and felt inclined to do the handsome thing. He patted my head as I sat upon my mother’s lap, and says he— “How beautiful is babes! So small and yet so much like human beings, only not so large. This boy,” says he fatly, looking down at me, “will make a noise in the world yet. He has a long head, a very long head.” “Do you think so?” says my father. “Indeed I do,” says the doctor. “The little fellow,” says he in a sudden fit of abstraction, “has a long head, a very long head—and it’s as thick as it is long.” [Illustration: “AND IT’S AS THICK AS IT IS LONG.”] There was some coolness between the doctor and my father after that, and on the following Sunday my mother refused to look at his wife’s new bonnet in church. So far as I can trace back, we never had a literary character in our family, save a venerable aunt of mine, on my mother’s side, who commenced her writing career by refusing to contribute to the Sunday papers, and subsequently won much fame as the authoress of a set of copy-books. When this gifted relative found herself acquiring a reputation she came in state to visit us, and so disgusted my very practical father, by wearing slipshod gaiters, inking her right-hand thumb-nail every morning, calling all things by European names, and insisting upon giving our oldest plough-horse the romantic and literary title of “Lord Byron,” that my exasperated parent incurred a most tremendous prejudice against authorship, and vowed, when she went away, that he never would invite her presence again. I was only twenty years old at that time, and the novelty of my aunt’s conduct had a rather infatuating effect upon me. With the perversity often observable in youngsters before they have seen much of the world, I became deeply interested in my literary relative as soon as my father began speaking contemptuously of her pursuits, and it took very little time to invest me with a longing and determination to be a writer. Thenceforth I wore negligent linen; frequently rested my head upon the forefinger of my right hand, with a lofty and abstracted air; assumed an expression of settled and mysterious gloom when at church, and suffered my hair to grow long and uncombed. My bearing during this period of infatuation could hardly fail to attract considerable attention in our village, and there were two opinions about me. One was that I had been jilted; the other that I was likely to become a vagabond and an actor. My father inclined to the former, and left me, as he thought, to get over my disappointment in the natural way.