Peter sat at the celestial gate,
And nodded o'er his keys."
I invented a pronunciation for the long words, and went about the
house reciting grandly,--
"St. Peter sat at the kelestikal gate,
And nodded o'er his keys."
That volume, swept back to me with the rubbish of Time, still
reminds me, forlorn and half-clad, of my childish fondness for
its mock-magnificence.
John Calvin and Lord Byron were rather a peculiar combination, as
the foundation of an infant's library; but I was not aware of any
unfitness or incompatibility. To me they were two brother-books,
like each other in their refusal to wear limp covers.
It is amusing to recall the rapid succession of contrasts in one
child's tastes. I felt no incongruity between Dr. Watts and
Mother Goose. I supplemented "Pibroch of Donuil Dhu" and
"Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day,"
with "Yankee Doodle" and the "Diverting History of John Gilpin;"
and with the glamour of some fairy tale I had just read still
haunting me, I would run out of doors eating a big piece of bread
and butter,--sweeter than any has tasted since,--and would jump
up towards the crows cawing high above me, cawing back to them,
and half wishing I too were a crow to make the sky ring with my
glee.
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