At first the child does not distinguish between what it "sees" and what it "fancies"; the one is as real, as objective, to it as the other, and it will talk to and play with its dream-comrades as merrily as with children like itself.

As a child, I myself very much preferred the former, and never knew what it was to be lonely.

But clumsy grown-ups come along and tramp right through the dream-garden, and crush the dream-flowers, and push the dream-children aside, and then say, in their loud, harsh voices--not soft and singable like the dream-voices--"You must not tell such naughty stories, Miss Annie; you give me the shivers, and your mamma will be very vexed with you." But this tendency in me was too strong to be stifled, and it found its food in the fairy tales I loved, and in the religious allegories that I found yet more entrancing.

How or when I learned to read, I do not know, for I cannot remember the time when a book was not a delight.

At five years of age I must have read easily, for I remember being often unswathed from a delightful curtain, in which I used to roll myself with a book, and told to "go and play," while I was still a five-years'-old dot.