I entered common school at the age of eight.
My grandfather, after his hegira from Mornington, left behind his
library of travels, lives of famous American Statesmen and Business
Men, and his Civil War books. Among these books were four treasure
troves that set my boy's imagination on fire. They were _Stanley's
Adventures in Africa_, Dr. Kane's Book of _Polar Explorations_, _Mungo
Park_, and, most amazing of all, a huge, sensational book called _Savage
Races of the World_ ... this title was followed by a score of harrowing
and sensational sub-titles in rubric. I revelled and rolled in this book
like a colt let out to first pasture. For days and nights, summer and
winter, I fought, hunted, was native to all the world's savage regions
in turn, partook gleefully of strange and barbarous customs, naked and
skin-painted. I pushed dug-outs and canoes along tropic water-ways where
at any moment an enraged hippopotamus might thrust up his snout and
overturn me, crunching the boat in two and leaving me a prey to
crocodiles ... I killed birds of paradise with poison darts which I blew
out of a reed with my nostrils ... I burned the houses of white settlers
... even indulged shudderingly in cannibal feasts.
The one thing that pre-eminently seized my imagination in _Savage Races
of the World_ was the frontispiece,--a naked black rushing full-tilt
through a tropical forest, his head of hair on fire, a huge
feather-duster of dishevelled flame .
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