t could not
leave a party of elderly strangers. This accident threw me unavoidably
upon one of his young people. Now this was a market-day; and there was a
press of country people present, whom I did not wish to hear my question.
Never did human creature, with his heart palpitating at Delphi for the
solution of some killing mystery, stand before the priestess of the
oracle, with lips that moved more sadly than mine, when now advancing to a
smiling young man at a desk. His answer was to decide, though I could not
exactly know _that_, whether for the next two years I was to have an hour
of peace. He was a handsome, good-natured young man, but full of fun and
frolic; and I dare say was amused with what must have seemed to _him_ the
absurd anxiety of my features. I described the work to him, and he
understood me at once: how many volumes did he think it would extend to?
There was a whimsical expression perhaps of drollery about his eyes, but
which unhappily, under my preconceptions, I translated into scorn, as he
replied,--"How may volumes? Oh! really I can't say, maybe a matter of
15,000, be the same more or less." "_More?_" I said in horror, altogether
neglecting the contingency of "less." "Why," he said, "we can't settle
these things to a nicety. But, considering the subject," [ay, _that_ was
the very thing which I myself considered,] "I should say, there might be
some trifle over, as suppose 400 or 500 volumes, be the same more or
less." What, then, here there might be supplements to supplements--the
work might positively _never_ end. On one pretence or another, if an
author or publisher might add 500 volumes, he might add another round
15,000. Indeed it strikes one even now, that by the time all the
one-legged commodores and yellow admirals of that generation had exhausted
their long yarns, another generation would have grown another crop of the
same gallant spinners. I asked no more, but slunk out of the shop, and
never again entered it with cheerfulness, or propounded any frank
questions as heretofore. For I was now seriously afraid of pointing
attention to myself as one that, by having purchased some numbers, and
obtained others on credit, had silently contracted an engagement to take
all the rest, though they should stretch to the crack of doom. Certainly
I had never heard of a work that extended to 15,000 volumes; but still
there was no natural impossibility that it should; and, if in any case, in
none so reasonably