arried to be touched by her Majesty
Queen Anne for the "king's evil," as scrofula used to be called. Our
honored friend The Dictator will tell you that the brother of one of his
Andover schoolmates was taken to one of these gifted persons, who touched
him, and hung a small bright silver coin, either a "fourpence ha'penny"
or a "ninepence," about his neck, which, strange to say, after being worn
a certain time, became tarnished, and finally black,--a proof of the
poisonous matters which had become eliminated from the system and
gathered upon the coin. I remember that at one time I used to carry
fourpence ha'pennies with holes bored through them, which I furnished to
children or to their mothers, under pledges of secrecy,--receiving a
piece of silver of larger dimensions in exchange. I never felt quite
sure about any extraordinary endowment being a part of my inheritance in
virtue of my special conditions of birth. A phrenologist, who examined
my head when I was a boy, said the two sides were unlike. My hatter's
measurement told me the same thing; but in looking over more than a
bushel of the small cardboard hat-patterns which give the exact shape of
the head, I have found this is not uncommon. The phrenologist made all
sorts of predictions of what I should be and do, which proved about as
near the truth as those recorded in Miss Edith Thomas's charming little
poem, "Augury," which some of us were reading the other day.

I have never been through college, but I had a relative who was famous as
a teacher of rhetoric in one of our universities, and especially for
taking the nonsense out of sophomorical young fellows who could not say
anything without rigging it up in showy and sounding phrases. I think I
learned from him to express myself in good old-fashioned English, and
without making as much fuss about it as our Fourth of July orators and
political haranguers were in the habit of making.

I read a good many stories during my boyhood, one of which left a lasting
impression upon me, and which I have always commended to young people.
It is too late, generally, to try to teach old people, yet one may profit
by it at any period of life before the sight has become too dim to be of
any use. The story I refer to is in "Evenings at Home," and is called
"Eyes and No Eyes." I ought to have it by me, but it is constantly
happening that the best old things get overlaid by the newest trash; and
though I have never seen anything of th