this log-cabin had a loft, where we boys slept, and in the loft were stored in barrels the books that had now begun to overflow the bookcase. i do not know why i chose the loft to renew my long-neglected friendship with them. the light could not have been good, though if i brought my books to the little gable window that overlooked the groaning and whistling gristmill i could see well enough. but perhaps i liked the loft best because the books were handiest there, and because i could be alone. at any rate, it was there that i read longfellow's "spanish student," which i found in an old paper copy of his poems in one of the barrels, and i instantly conceived for it the passion which all things spanish inspired in me. as i read i not only renewed my acquaintance with literature, but renewed my delight in people and places where i had been happy before those heavy years in dayton. at the same time i felt a little jealousy, a little grudge, that any one else should love them as well as i, and if the poem had not been so beautiful i should have hated the poet for trespassing on my ground. but i could not hold out long against the witchery of his verse. the "spanish student" became one of my passions; a minor passion, not a grand one, like 'don quixote' and the 'conquest of granada', but still a passion, and i should dread a little to read the piece now, lest i should disturb my old ideal of its beauty. the hero's rogue servant, chispa, seemed to me, then and long afterwards, so fine a bit of spanish character that i chose his name for my first pseudonym when i began to write for the newspapers, and signed my legislative correspondence for a cincinnati paper with it. i was in love with the heroine, the lovely dancer whose 'cachucha' turned my head, along with that of the cardinal, but whose name even i have forgotten, and i went about with the thought of her burning in my heart, as if she had been a real person.