After the miraculous appearance and disappearance of that torn leaf, I remember almost nothing of literature for several years. I was six or so when The Ugly Duckling aroused in me the melancholy of life, gave me to see the deep sadness which pervades all romance, beauty, and adventure. I laughed heartily at the old henbird's wise remark that the world extended past the next field and much further; I could perceive the humour of that. But when the ugly duckling at last flew away on his strong pinions, and when he met the swans and was accepted as an equal, then I felt sorrowful, agreeably sorrowful. It seemed to me that nothing could undo, atone for, the grief and humiliations of the false duckling's early youth. I brooded over the injustice of his misfortunes for days, and the swans who welcomed him struck me as proud, cold, and supercilious in their politeness. I have never read The Ugly Duckling since those days. It survives in my memory as a long and complex narrative, crowded with vague and mysterious allusions, and wet with the tears of things. No novel--it was a prodigious novel for me--has more deliciously disturbed me, not even "On the Eve" or "Lost Illusions." Two years later I read "Hiawatha." The picture which I formed of Minnehaha remains vividly and crudely with me; it resembles a simpering waxen doll of austere habit. Nothing else can I recall of "Hiawatha," save odd lines, and a few names such as Gitchee-Gumee. I did not much care for the tale. Soon after I read it, I see a vision of a jolly-faced house-painter graining a door. "What do you call that?" I asked him, pointing to some very peculiar piece of graining, and he replied, gravely: "That, young sir, is a wigwam to wind the moon up with." I privately decided that he must have read, not "Hiawatha," but something similar and stranger, something even more wig-wammy. I dared not question him further, because he was so witty.