We expurgated as we read, child fashion,
taking into our sleek little heads all that we could comprehend
or apprehend, and unconsciously passing over what might have been
hurtful, perhaps, at a later period. I suppose we failed to get a very
close conception of Shakespeare's colossal genius, but we did get a
tremendous and lasting impression of force and power, life and truth.
When we declaimed certain scenes in an upper chamber with sloping
walls and dormer windows, a bed for a throne, a cotton umbrella for a
sceptre, our creations were harmless enough. If I remember rightly,
our nine-year-old Lady Macbeths and Iagos, Falstaffs and Cleopatras,
after they had been dipped in the divine alembic of childish
innocence, came out so respectable that they would not have brought
the historic "blush to the cheek of youth."
On the shelf above the Shakespeare were a few things presumably better
suited to childish tastes,--Hawthorne's "Wonder Book," Kingsley's
"Water Babies," Miss Edgeworth's "Rosamond," and the "Arabian Nights.
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