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Show 96 I was as bad as my grandmother. Books were my solace when I got too old to receive dolls for Christmas. The school library contained classics, most of them over the head of grade school children. It was like discovering gold when I found such books as "Mill on the Floss, " "Lorna Doone, " "Vanity Fair", and "Tale of Two Cities" which I devoured. Mary Shipp's parents had a good library: "Quo Vadis, " "Les Miserables, " and others. I always headed for the book case when I went there. "I never worry about you when you come to our place. You are welcome to any book we have, even to take home, and you are the only child I would trust with them. " Jackmans, across the street, had a complete library of Zane Grey, which I dispatched at the rate of a book a day, until Brother Jackman, a portly, bewhiskered man whose father had come into the Salt Lake Valley along with Brigham Young, criticized me. "What's you doin'? Tryin' to ruin your eyes?" I was trying to do just that. When my parents sent me to bed and told me to turn off the light I would get by some window and read by moonlight. I had to be routed out from under beds, behind dressers, all sorts of nooks and crannies because I simply could not bear to lay a book down until it said: end. It drove Papa to distraction. When Eldon got "The Winning of Barbara Worth" for Christmas, I got hold of it while he was doing chores. I wouldn't give it up. "She always reads my books before I do, " he complained. This attracted Papa's attention to me. |