My Literary Passions | Page 6

a dagger in her mother's heart," and I
should not be surprised if it were from this fine-languaged lady that my

grandfather derived his taste for poetry rather than from his father, who
was of a worldly wiser mind. To be sure, he became a Friend by
Convincement as the Quakers say, and so I cannot imagine that he was
altogether worldly; but he had an eye to the main chance: he founded
the industry of making flannels in the little Welsh town where he lived,
and he seems to have grown richer, for his day and place, than any of
us have since grown for ours. My grandfather, indeed, was concerned
chiefly in getting away from the world and its wickedness. He came to
this country early in the nineteenth century and settled his family in a
log-cabin in the Ohio woods, that they might be safe from the sinister
influences of the village where he was managing some woollen-mills.
But he kept his affection for certain poets of the graver, not to say
gloomier sort, and he must have suffered his children to read them,
pending that great question of their souls' salvation which was a
lifelong trouble to him.
My father, at any rate, had such a decided bent in the direction of
literature, that he was not content in any of his several economical
experiments till he became the editor of a newspaper, which was then
the sole means of satisfying a literary passion. His paper, at the date
when I began to know him, was a living, comfortable and decent, but
without the least promise of wealth in it, or the hope even of a much
better condition. I think now that he was wise not to care for the
advancement which most of us have our hearts set upon, and that it was
one of his finest qualities that he was content with a lot in life where he
was not exempt from work with his hands, and yet where he was not so
pressed by need but he could give himself at will not only to the things
of the spirit, but the things of the mind too. After a season of scepticism
he had become a religious man, like the rest of his race, but in his own
fashion, which was not at all the fashion of my grandfather: a Friend
who had married out of Meeting, and had ended a perfervid Methodist.
My father, who could never get himself converted at any of the
camp-meetings where my grandfather often led the forces of prayer to
his support, and had at last to be given up in despair, fell in with the
writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, and embraced the doctrine of that
philosopher with a content that has lasted him all the days of his many
years. Ever since I can remember, the works of Swedenborg formed a
large part of his library; he read them much himself, and much to my

mother, and occasionally a "Memorable Relation" from them to us
children. But he did not force them upon our notice, nor urge us to read
them, and I think this was very well. I suppose his conscience and his
reason kept him from doing so. But in regard to other books, his
fondness was too much for him, and when I began to show a liking for
literature he was eager to guide my choice.
His own choice was for poetry, and the most of our library, which was
not given to theology, was given to poetry. I call it the library now, but
then we called it the bookcase, and that was what literally it was,
because I believe that whatever we had called our modest collection of
books, it was a larger private collection than any other in the town
where we lived. Still it was all held, and shut with glass doors, in a case
of very few shelves. It was not considerably enlarged during my
childhood, for few books came to my father as editor, and he indulged
himself in buying them even more rarely. My grandfather's book store
(it was also the village drug-store) had then the only stock of literature
for sale in the place; and once, when Harper & Brothers' agent came to
replenish it, be gave my father several volumes for review. One of
these was a copy of Thomson's Seasons, a finely illustrated edition,
whose pictures I knew long before I knew the poetry, and thought them
the most beautiful things that ever were. My father read passages of the
book aloud, and he wanted me to read it all myself. For the matter of
that he wanted me to read Cowper, from whom no one could get
anything but good, and he