longer new, while a pair of green
spectacles that seemed needless to his brisk little eyes gave him
something of a scholar-like and literary air. After allowing me a
sufficient time to inspect the puppets, he advanced with a bow and
drew my attention to some books in a corner of the wagon. These he
forthwith began to extol with an amazing volubility of well-sounding
words and an ingenuity of praise that won him my heart as being myself
one of the most merciful of critics. Indeed, his stock required some
considerable powers of commendation in the salesman. There were
several ancient friends of mine--the novels of those happy days when
my affections wavered between the _Scottish Chiefs_ and _Thomas
Thumb_--besides a few of later date whose merits had not been
acknowledged by the public. I was glad to find that dear little
venerable volume the _New England Primer_, looking as antique as
ever, though in its thousandth new edition; a bundle of superannuated
gilt picture-books made such a child of me that, partly for the
glittering covers and partly for the fairy-tales within, I bought the
whole, and an assortment of ballads and popular theatrical songs drew
largely on my purse. To balance these expenditures, I meddled neither
with sermons nor science nor morality, though volumes of each were
there, nor with a _Life of Franklin_ in the coarsest of paper,
but so showily bound that it was emblematical of the doctor himself in
the court-dress which he refused to wear at Paris, nor with Webster's
spelling-book, nor some of Byron's minor poems, nor half a dozen
little Testaments at twenty-five cents each. Thus far the collection
might have been swept from some great bookstore or picked up at an
evening auction-room, but there was one small blue-covered pamphlet
which the pedler handed me with so peculiar an air that I purchased it
immediately at his own price; and then for the first time the thought
struck me that I had spoken face to face with the veritable author of
a printed book.

The literary-man now evinced a great kindness for me, and I ventured
to inquire which way he was travelling.

"Oh," said he, "I keep company with this old gentlemen here, and we
are moving now toward the camp-meeting at Stamford."

He then explained to me that for the present season he had rented a
corner of the wagon as a book-store, which, as he wittily observed,
was a true circulating library, since there were few parts of the
country where i