its past. There is nothing here of the sociologist's notebook, nor of the overworked optic nerve of the photographer-realist. Memory has discarded everything that is not memorable, quick, delicious, pungent, or enchanting to the revisiting mind. There are reminiscences of childhood raptures here as exquisite as that passage in Rousseau in which he remembers how he and his father read romances together till they were reminded that it was morning by the swallows twittering under the eaves. Take, for example, this recovery of the child's delight in learning to read—not forgetting that Mr. Dell's impulse to revise educational method derives from this source:
He had been looking at his favorite picture in the Yellow Fairy Book. He had said to his mother so often: "Mamma, read me that part," that he knew the passage beside it almost by heart. He put his finger on the printed words, one after another, and spoke them aloud: "The—Prince—took—her—hand" He stopped, with the realization that he had been reading. It was so wonderful that the thought of it made him feel faint. He went back again with his finger, saying them hesitatingly. With a kind of fearful awe he proceeded down the page.
Yes, it was true—he could read. And suddenly he began to cry out in piercing tones, "Mamma! Mamma!"
She came running, her arms white with flour from breadmaking.
"I can read! I can read!" he cried.
After young Felix has learned to wander on short excursions into "the realms of gold" he has a curious fantasy one day in school while dreaming over how
