Indeed, modern literature in our tongue abounds in this element, from "Childe Harold" to the second and third long chapters in Mrs. Ward's "David Grieve," ending with his engagement to Lucy Purcell; Thackeray's Arthur Pendennis and his characteristic love of the far older and scheming Fanny Fotheringay; David in James Lane Allen's "Reign of Law," who read Darwin, was expelled from the Bible College and the church, and finally was engaged to Gabriella; and scores more might be enumerated. There is even Sonny,[47] who, rude as he was and poorly as he did in all his studies, at the same age when he began to keep company, "tallered" his hair, tied a bow of ribbon to the buggy whip, and grew interested in manners, passing things, putting on his coat and taking off his hat at table, began to study his menagerie of pet snakes, toads, lizards, wrote John Burroughs, helped him and got help in return, took to observing, and finally wrote a book about the forest and its occupants, all of which is very _bien trouvé_ if not historic truth. Two singular reflections always rearise in reading Goethe's autobiographical writings: first, that both the age and the place, with its ceremonies, festivals, great pomp and stirring events in close quarters in the little province where he lived, were especially adapted to educate children and absorb them in externals; and, second, that this wonderful boy had an extreme propensity for moralizing and drawing lessons of practical service from all about him. This is no less manifest in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels, which supplements the autobiography. Both together present a very unique type of adolescence, the elaborate story of which defies epitome. From the puppet craze well on into his precocious university life it was his passion to explore the widest ranges of experience and then to reflect, moralize, or poetize upon them. Perhaps no one ever studied the nascent stages of his own life and elaborated their every incident with such careful observation and analysis. His peculiar diathesis enabled him to conserve their freshness on to full maturity, when he gave them literary form. Most lack power to fully utilize their own experience even for practical self-knowledge and guidance, but with Goethe nothing was wasted from which self-culture could be extracted.