Page:Roads to Childhood (1920).pdf/134

ing things in pictures. I had no gift for drawing and the mechanics of writing was extremely difficult for me. I shall never be able to unearth a manuscript written before the age of ten. My early literary compositions were all scribbled and dispatched by post. I never had a doubt that what I whispered as I scribbled was read by the cousin or brother to whom it was sent. Writing, like going to school, was a social experience full of news of people and of what they said and did. Never did I write out of deeper emotions. I hated goodness in books and the tendency to get everybody to behave alike, in life or in books.

The invitation to read was all over the house, and on stormy days I roamed through the rooms, following my brothers from library to attic, seeing what the books were like, often watching them reading and trying to read their books. The bound volumes of St. Nicholas, Our Young Folks, and Harper’s Magazine were always in the offing and long before I could read I was familiar with their illustrations.