And on what, I asked, did the Lord
feed Elijah? On vegetables or graham bread? No, he directed the ravens
to feed his prophet on flesh. The Bible being the sole rule, father at
once acknowledged that he was mistaken. The Lord never would have sent
flesh to Elijah by the ravens if graham bread were better.
I remember as a great and sudden discovery that the poetry of the
Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton was a source of inspiring,
exhilarating, uplifting pleasure; and I became anxious to know all
the poets, and saved up small sums to buy as many of their books as
possible. Within three or four years I was the proud possessor of
parts of Shakespeare's, Milton's, Cowper's, Henry Kirke White's,
Campbell's, and Akenside's works, and quite a number of others seldom
read nowadays. I think it was in my fifteenth year that I began to
relish good literature with enthusiasm, and smack my lips over
favorite lines, but there was desperately little time for reading,
even in the winter evenings,--only a few stolen minutes now and then.
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