Many a night, when a speech of Daniel Webster or Henry Clay or Dewitt Clinton had pushed me to the edge of unconsciousness, while I resisted by counting the steel links in the watch chain of Uncle Peabody--my rosary in every time of trouble--I had been bowled over the brink by some account of horse colic and its remedy, or of the proper treatment of hoof disease in sheep. I suffered keenly from the horse colic and like troubles and from the many hopes and perils of democracy in my childhood. I found the Bible, however, the most joyless book of all, Samson being, as I thought, the only man in it who amounted to much. A shadow lay across its pages which came, I think, from the awful solemnity of my aunt when she opened them. It reminded me of a dark rainy day made fearful by thunder and lightning. It was not the cheerful thing, illumined by the immortal faith of man which, since then, I have found it to be. The box of books changed the whole current of our lives. I remember vividly that evening when we took out the books and tenderly felt their covers and read their titles. There were _Cruikshanks' Comic Almanac_ and _Hood's Comic Annual_; tales by Washington Irving and James K. Paulding and Nathaniel Hawthorne and Miss Mitford and Miss Austin; the poems of John Milton and Felicia Hemans. Of the treasures in the box I have now; in my possession: A life of Washington, _The Life and Writings of Doctor Duckworth_, _The Stolen Child_, by "John Galt, Esq."; _Rosine Laval_, by "Mr. Smith"; _Sermons and Essays_, by William Ellery Channing. We found in the box, also, thirty numbers of the _United States Magazine and Democratic Review_ and sundry copies of the _New York Mirror_. "Ayes! I declare! What do you think o' this, Peabody Baynes!" Aunt Deel exclaimed as she sat turning the pages of a novel. "Ye know Aunt Minervy used to say that a novel was a fast horse on the road to perdition--ayes!" "Well she wasn't--" Uncle Peabody began and stopped suddenly. What he meant to say about her will never be definitely known. In half a moment he added: "I guess if Sue Wright recommends 'em they won't hurt us any." "Ayes! I ain't afraid--we'll wade into 'em," she answered recklessly. "Ayes! we'll see what they're about." Aunt Deel began with _The Stolen Child_. She read slowly and often paused for comment or explanation or laughter or to touch the corner of an eye with a corner of her handkerchief in moments when we were all deeply moved by the misfortunes of our favorite characters, which were acute and numerous. Often she stopped to spell out phrases of French or Latin, whereupon Uncle Peabody would exclaim: "Call it 'snags' and go on." The "snags" were numerous in certain of the books we read, in which case Uncle Peabody would exclaim: "Say, that's purty rough plowin'. Mebbe you better move into another field." How often I have heard Aunt Deel reading when the effect was like this: