, Tremont
Street"--a playbill which I have announcing the twenty-first
representation, November 1, 1845; the writer sent it to me in MS., where
it lies among the chaos of my papers. In England it has been issued five
times in various forms, and a printed play thereof as adapted by
Fitzball, who wrote for Astley's and the like, was acted (without my
leave asked or granted) in November 1847, at the City of London Theatre
in the East End: I did not stop it, as on a certain private scrutiny I
saw that the influence of the play upon its crowded audiences seemed a
good one. Unseen and unknown in a private box I noted the touching
effect of Grace's Psalm (ch. viii.) and the sobs and tears all over the
theatre that accompanied it; so it was a wisdom not to interfere with
such wholesome popularity and wholesale good-doing. It was a fair
method of preaching the Gospel to the poor, for that crowd was of the
humblest.

The "Crock of Gold" has been translated complete as a _feuilleton_ both
in French and German by newspapers; and I have copies somewhere,--but I
know not who wrote the French, the German authoress having been the
Fraulein Von Lagerstroem.

What Mr. Butler says in his preface, no doubt after speech with me, for
I was his visitor at the time in 1851, is this:--

"All who have had the good fortune to meet Mr. Tupper during his visit
here have been struck with his characteristic impulsiveness. In
accordance with this feature of his mind, nearly all of his most
successful performances have been occasioned by something altogether
incidental and unpremeditated--the result of an impulse
accidentally--shall we not say, providentially?--imparted. It was so
with the first work in this series (four volumes) respecting the
composition of which he has given to me in conversation the following
account. Some years ago he purchased a house at Brighton. While laying
out the garden, he had occasion to have several drains made. One day
observing a workman, Francis Suter, standing in one of the trenches wet
and wearied with toil, Mr. Tupper said to him in a tone of pleasantry,
'Wouldn't you like to dig up there a crock full of gold?'--'If I did,'
said the man, 'it would do me no good, because merely finding it would
not make it mine.'--'But suppose you could not only find such a
treasure, but might honestly keep it, wouldn't you think yourself
lucky?'--'Oh yes, sir, I suppose I should--but,' after a pause, 'but I
am not so sure, sir,