MY GOAL--TO READ THE HIGHWAYMAN

THEY REFUSED TO READ IT TO ME REPEATEDLY

I could not get enough of the story of the HIGHWAYMAN.  It reinforced my already strong dislike of REDCOATS.  I already knew from my Jenckes Yankee anti-King background and My Irish mother Coleman's  opposition to the continued English occupation of Ireland that the REDCOATS were the bad guys.

So I was  totally sympathetic with Bess and her  Robber lover.  
IN fact I  could not get enough of the story. As soon as  my mother or Uncle Joe finished, I would beg them to start and read it over again. Sometimes they did, but after a few repetitions, they refused.
SO I began to try  to  remember the wonderful lines--they were like  music to my ears. 

I especially loved the phrase --"the moon was a ghostly galleon." I immediately added it to my stock of phrases. When I stood  in the window and watched the moon, I would recite that line over and over again.
I was in love with the  metaphor. and the idea of  ghostly and galleon.  I wondered  .what a galleon was .  And Joe consulted a dictionary :A galleon refers to a type of sailboat used in the 15th to 18th centuries mostly for battles and carrying consumer goods. Galleons had big square sails rigged onto several masts. They were built and sailed by many Europeans, but they are most commonly associated with the Spanish

And just imagine this  was a GHOST SHIP-- and I watched for the times when the  moon moves through the clouds and   plays a  kind of peek-a-boo game with us on Earth,

"TOSSED UPON CLOUDY SEAS"

Pretty soon I had all of  PART One committed to memory. I would sit with the  book open to the page and begin my recitation.

That got my mother's attention.
 OMIGOD! Is she reading?
Then when I faltered or came to the end of my memory, she  saw that I had remembered half of the poem. She started sitting next to me and pointing  to each word with a pencil. When I stopped, she would prompt me and we would go  on. Pretty soon after a couple of days past, I had  conquered the whole poem. I especially liked the description of Tim the Ostler--"his eyes were hollows of madness,"  WOW STRONG STUFF.

What is  an OSTLER?  A man employed to look after the horses of people staying at an inn. ... 'He partook of a leisurely breakfast, paid his reckoning, had the ostler bring his horse, and set off to the sound of church bells in the clear air.'

My mother loved  showing me  how to use the dictionary--she said that all the words in the English language were inside that one book.  SO  that started me on the habit of looking words  up. I liked the  fact that it was  all in alphabetical order. 
I had known  how to say the alphabet since I was two years old.  I thought that it was just a kind of jingle or rhyme,  but I never saw  why it was  important--now I knew. So if I knew how to spell a word, I could find it in the  dictionary. 

I suddenly knew that words were made up of letters and there were only 26  letters-- so all words were combinations of those few letters.
SO  exciting and simple.
I  kept  reciting The Highwayman and  sat with my mother  pointing to each word,

AND SUDDENLY A HUGE LIGHT WENT OFF IN MY MIND.
Those sounds that I was saying were connected  to those letters I saw arranged into words on the printed page.

IN SOME WEIRD WAY I GOT THE CONNECTION OF THE SOUNDS AND THE SYMBOLS

AND SO I STARTED READING!