I saw the Hudson and the Catskills, took poor Rip at once into my heart, as everybody has, pitied Ichabod while I laughed at him, thought the old Dutch feast a most admirable thing, and long before I was through, all regret at my lost Christmas had gone down with the wind, and I had found out there are books and books.

That vast hunger to read never left me.

If there was no candle, I poked my head down to the fire; read while I was eating, blowing the bellows, or walking from one place to another.

I could read and walk four miles an hour.

The world centred in books.