He advised that she should become a school-teacher. School-teaching scarcely seemed a suitable vocation for a child of so shrinking a nature. Clara was fifteen at the time, and still diffident. She was lying in bed with the mumps, and overheard her mother’s question and the answer. Her mother was impressed by it, and so was Clara. Years afterward she looked back upon that experience as the turning-point in her life. Long after she had ceased to have very much faith in phrenology, she blessed the day that sent a phrenologist into her home. When asked in later years what book had influenced her most, she wrote the following reply: THE BOOK WHICH HAS MOST INFLUENCED ME Superlatives are difficult to deal with, the comparative is always so near. That which interests most, may influence little. Most books interest in a greater or less degree, and possibly have a temporary influence. The yellow-covered literature which the boy from twelve to sixteen reads, surely interests him, and only too often creates an involuntary influence, the results of which mark his entire life. He adopts methods and follows courses which he otherwise would not have done, and reaps misfortune for a harvest. And so with the girl of like age who pores and weeps over some tender, unwholesome, love-lorn picture of impossible personages, until they become real to her, and, while she can never personate them, they stand in the way of so much which she really does need, it may well be said that the results influence her entire life. Not alone the character of what is read, but the period in life of the reader, may and will have much to do with the potency of results. The little girl who is so fortunate as to clasp her child fingers around a copy of “Little Women,” or “Little Men” (Bless the memory of my friend and co-worker Louisa M. Alcott!), is in small danger from the effects of the literature she may afterwards meet. Her tastes are formed for wholesome food. And the boy! Ah, well; it will require a great deal of prodding to curb and root the wild grass out of his nature! But what a splendid growth he makes, once it is done! All of these conditions of character, circumstances, and time may be said to have found place in the solution of the little problem now before me; viz: “What book most influenced me?” If it had read “interested” rather than “influenced,” I should have made a wide range--“The Fables of Æsop,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Arabian Nights,” “The Ballads of Scott,” “The Benign Old Vicar,” “The Citizens of the World,” and mainly the mass of choice old English classics--for who can select?--The glorious “Idylls of the King.” In fancy I should have sat at the round table with Arthur’s knights, searched for the Holy Grail with Sir Galahad, roamed Africa with Livingstone and Stanley, breakfasted with the Autocrat, and dropped the gathering tear for the loved Quaker poet, so dear to us all.