two
o'clock
The first book my boy remembered to have heard him read was Moore 's `` Lalla Rookh , '' of which he formed but a vague notion , though while he struggled after its meaning he took all its music in , and began at once to make rhymes of his own . He had no conception of literature except the pleasure there was in making it ; and he had no outlook into the world of it , which must have been pretty open to his father . The father read aloud some of Dickens 's Christmas stories , then new ; and the boy had a good deal of trouble with the `` Haunted Man . '' One rarest night of all , the family sat up till two o'clock , listening to a novel that my boy long ago forgot the name of , if he ever knew its name . It was all about a will , forged or lost , and there was a great scene in court , and after that the mother declared that she could not go to bed till she heard the end . His own first reading was in history . At nine years of age he read the history of Greece , and the history of Rome , and he knew that Goldsmith wrote them .