At these I played, conjured up their
scenes, and delighted to hear them rehearsed unto seventy times
seven. I am not sure but what Paul Blake came after I could read.
It seems connected with a visit to the country, and an experience
unforgettable. The day had been warm; H--- and I had played
together charmingly all day in a sandy wilderness across the road;
then came the evening with a great flash of colour and a heavenly
sweetness in the air. Somehow my play-mate had vanished, or is out
of the story, as the sages say, but I was sent into the village on
an errand; and, taking a book of fairy tales, went down alone
through a fir-wood, reading as I walked. How often since then has
it befallen me to be happy even so; but that was the first time:
the shock of that pleasure I have never since forgot, and if my
mind serves me to the last, I never shall, for it was then that I
knew I loved reading.
II
To pass from hearing literature to reading it is to take a great
and dangerous step. With not a few, I think a large proportion of
their pleasure then comes to an end; 'the malady of not marking'
overtakes them; they read thenceforward by the eye alone and hear
never again the chime of fair words or the march of the stately
period. Non ragioniam of these. But to all the step is dangerous;
it involves coming of age; it is even a kind of second weaning.
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