Between himself and his parents there was little sympathy and understanding.

He saw them at meals, and fled from the table to his own room, where he read voraciously.
"You never heard of such a jumble of books," he said to Stella Croyle.
"Matthew Arnold, Helps, Paradise Lost, Ten Thousand a Year, The Revolt of Islam, Tennyson.

I knew the whole of In Memoriam by heart--absolutely every line of it, and pages of Browning.

The little brown books! I would walk miles to pick one of them up.

My people would find the books lying about the house, and couldn't make head or tail of why I wanted to read them.