Confessions of a Book-Lover

by Maurice Francis Egan

nected with the army. This procedure of reading aloud was not always agreeable, as my father frequently went to sleep in the middle of a passage and forgot what I had already read. The consequence was that I was obliged to begin the same old story over again on the following evening.

It happened that my father was one of the directors of a local library, and in it I found Bates's volume on the Amazon—I forget the exact title of the book. I found myself in a new world; I lived in Para; I tried to manufacture an imitation of the Urari poison with a view to exterminating rats in the warehouse by the use of arrows; I lived and had my being in the forests of Brazil; and I produced, at intervals, a thrilling novel, with the glowing atmosphere of the Amazon as a background. I preferred Mr. Bates to any novelist I had ever read. He held possession of my imagination, until he was forced out by a Mr. Jerningham who wrote a most entrancing book on Brittany. Saint Malo became the only town for me; I adored Henri de la Rochejaquelein; and the Stuarts, whom I had learned to love at the knees of Sir Walter Scott, were displaced by the Vendéans.

Noticing that I was devoted to books of travel, my father asked me to parse Kane's "Arctic Voyages." I found the volumes cold and repellent. They gave me a rooted prejudice against the North Pole which even the adventure of Doctor Cook has never enabled me to overcome.

About this time, my mother began to feel that I needed to read something more gentle, which would root me more effectively in my religion. She began, I think, with Cardinal Newman's "Callista" in which there was a thrilling chapter called "The Possession of Juba." It seemed to me one of the most stirring things I had ever read. Then I was presented with Mrs. Sadlier's "The Blakes and the Flanagans," which struck me as a very delightful satire, and with a really interesting novel of New York called "Rosemary," by Dr. J. V. Huntington; and then a terribly blood-curdling story of the Carbonari in Italy, called "Lionello." After this I was wafted into a series of novels by Julia Kavanagh; "Natalie," and "Bessie," and "Seven Years," I think were the principals. My father declined to read them; he thought they were too sentimental, but as the author had an Irish name he was in

clined to regard them with tolerance. He thought I would be better employed in absorbing "Tom and Jerry; or The Adventures of Corinthian Bob," by Pierce Egan. My mother objected to this, and substituted "Lady Violet; or the Wonder of Kingswood Chace," by the younger Pierce Egan, which she considered more moral.

My father was very generous at Christmas, and I bought a large volume of Froissart for two dollars and a half at an old book stand on Fifth Street, near Spruce. After this, I was lost to the world during the Christmas holidays. After breakfast, I saturated myself with the delightful battles in that precious book.

My principal duty was to look after the front pavement. In the spring and summer, it was carefully washed twice a week and reddened with some kind of paint, which always accompanied a box of fine white sand for the scouring of the marble steps; but in the winter, this respectable sidewalk had to be kept free from snow and ice.

Hitherto my battle with the elements had been rather a diversion. Besides, I was in competition with the other small boys in the block—or in the "square," as we Philadelphians called it. Now

it became irksome; I neglected to dig the ice from between the bricks; I skimped my cleaning of the gutter; I forgot to put on my "gums." The boy next door became a mirror of virtue; he was quoted to me as one whose pavement was a model to all the neighbours; indeed, it was rumoured that the Mayor passing down our street, had stopped and admired the working of his civic spirit, while the result of my efforts was passed by with evident contempt. I did not care. I hugged Froissart to my heart. Who would condescend to wield a broom and a wooden shovel, even for the reward of ten cents in cash, when he could throw javelins and break lances with the knights of the divine Froissart? The end of my freedom came after this. The terrible incident of the Mayor's contempt, invented, I believe, by the boy next door, induced my mother to believe that I was not only losing my morals, but becoming too much of a book-worm. For many long weeks I was deprived of any amusing book except "Robinson Crusoe." After this interval, vacation came; I seemed to have grown older, and books were never quite the same again.