I began to know that I liked poetry, and to think a good deal
about it at my childish work. Outside of the hymn-book, the first
rhymes I committed to memory were in the "Old Farmer's Almanac,"
files of which hung in the chimney corner, and were an inexhaust-
ible source of entertainment to us younger ones.
My father kept his newspapers also carefully filed away in the
garret, but we made sad havoc among the "Palladiums" and other
journals that we ought to have kept as antiquarian treasures.
We valued the anecdote column and the poet's corner only; these
we clipped unsparingly for our scrap-books.
A tattered copy of Johnson's large Dictionary was a great delight
to me, on account of the specimens of English versification which
I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so
many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow;
and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its
jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and
thinking what a charming occupation it must be to "make up"
verses.
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