I began Latin at eight years—my first book a yellow paper primer.
I was always interested in chickens, and dosed all the indisposed as:
Dandy Dick
Was very sick,
I gave him red pepper
And soon he was better.
In spring, I remember the humming of our bees around the sawdust, and my craze for flower seeds and a garden of my own.
Father had a phenomenal memory; he could recite in his classroom pages of Scott's novels, which he had not read since early youth. He had no intention of allowing my memory to grow flabby from lack of use. I often repeat a verse he asked me to commit to memory:
In reading authors, when you find
Bright passages that strike your mind,
And which perhaps you may have reason
To think on at another season;
Be not contented with the sight,
But jot them down in black and white;
Such respect is wisely shown
As makes another's thought your own.
Every day at the supper table I had to repeat some poetry or prose and on Sunday a hymn, some of which were rather depressing to a young person, as:
Life is but a winter's day;
A journey to the tomb.
And the vivid description of "Dies Irae":
When shrivelling like a parched scroll
The flaming heavens together roll
And louder yet and yet more dread
Swells the high Trump that wakes the dead.