ning necromancer
Had drawn a circle magically round me,
Till like the wretched victim of Kehama,
(Southey's abortion)

"Nothing like liquor ever could approach me!
But it is thou, disinterested comrade,
Bearest the rainy weather uncomplaining,
Oh, my umbrella!

"How many hats, and 'upper Bens,' and new coats,
How many wretched duckings hast thou saved me
Well--I have done--but must be still indebted
To my umbrella!"

Another such trifle may be permissible, as thus: also about an umbrella,
a stolen one. On the occasion of my loss I wrote this to rebuke the
thief, "The height of honesty:"--

"Three friends once, in the course of conversation,
Touch'd upon honesty: 'No virtue better,'
Says Dick, quite lost in sweet self-admiration,
'I'm sure I'm honest;--ay--beyond the letter:
You know the field I rent; beneath the ground
My plough stuck in the middle of a furrow
And there a pot of golden coins I found!
My landlord has it, without fail, to-morrow.'
Thus modestly his good intents he told:
'But stay,' says Bob,' we soon shall see who's best,
A _stranger_ left with me uncounted gold!
But I'll not touch it; which is honestest?'
'Your honest acts I've heard,' says Jack, 'but I
Have done much better, would that all folks learn'd it,
Mine is the highest pitch of honesty--
I borrow'd an umbrella and--_return'd it!!_'".

_N.B._--I remember that Dr. Buckland, whose geological lectures I
attended, had the words "Stolen from Dr. Buckland" engraved on the ivory
handle of _his_ umbrella: he never lost it again.

In the way of prose, not printed (though much later on I have since
published "Paterfamilias's Diary of Everybody's Tour") I have kept
journals of holiday travel _passim_, whereof I now make a brief mention.
Six juvenile bits of authorship are before me, ranging through the
summers of 1828 to 1835 inclusive; each neatly written in its note-book
on the spot and at the time (therefore fresh and true) decorated with
untutored sketches, and all full of interest ab least to myself in old
memories, faded interests, and departed friends. As very rare survivals
of the past (for who cares to keep as I have done his schoolboy journals
of half a century ago?) I will give at haphazard from each in its order
of time a short quotation by way of sample,--a brick to represent the
house