At a pretty early age I began to read certain books of poetry, notably Longfellow's poem, "The Saga of King Olaf," which absorbed me.

This introduced me to Scandinavian literature; and I have never lost my interest in and affection for it.
Among my first books was a volume of a hopelessly unscientific kind by Mayne Reid, about mammals, illustrated with pictures no more artistic than but quite as thrilling as those in the typical school geography.
When my father found how deeply interested I was in this not very accurate volume, he gave me a little book by J.G.Wood, the English writer of popular books on natural history, and then a larger one of his called "Homes Without Hands." Both of these were cherished possessions.
They were studied eagerly; and they finally descended to my children.
The "Homes Without Hands," by the way, grew to have an added association in connection with a pedagogical failure on my part.

In accordance with what I believed was some kind of modern theory of making education interesting and not letting it become a task, I endeavored to teach my eldest small boy one or two of his letters from the title-page.

As the letter "H" appeared in the title an unusual number of times, I selected that to begin on, my effort being to keep the small boy interested, not to let him realize that he was learning a lesson, and to convince him that he was merely having a good time.

Whether it was the theory or my method of applying it that was defective I do not know, but I certainly absolutely eradicated from his brain any ability to learn what "H" was; and long after he had learned all the other letters of the alphabet in the old-fashioned way, he proved wholly unable to remember "H" under any circumstances.
Quite unknown to myself, I was, while a boy, under a hopeless disadvantage in studying nature.