When only eleven years old, with three pence in my pocket--my whole
fortune--I perceived, at Richmond, in a bookseller's window, a little
book, marked 'Price Three pence'--Swift's _Tale of a Tub_. Its odd title
excited my curiosity; I bought it in place of my supper. So impatient
was I to examine it, that I got over into a field at the upper corner of
Kew Gardens, and sat down to read, on the shady side of a haystack. The
book was so different from anything I had read before--it was something
so new to my mind, that, though I could not at all understand some parts
of it, still it delighted me beyond measure, and produced, what I have
always considered, a sort of birth of intellect. I read on till it was
dark, without any thought of supper or bed. When I could see no longer,
I put it into my pocket, and fell asleep beside the stack, till the
birds awaked me in the morning; and then I started off, still reading my
little book. I could relish nothing beside; I carried it about with me
wherever I went, till, when about twenty years old, I lost it in a box
that fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy.--W. COBBETT.