Ar--r, Lenny," said the Tinker, with a prolonged rattle in that said
Ar--r, which was not without great significance. "But you sees the real
gentleman who han't got his bread to get, can hafford to 'spise his
cracter in the world. A poor tinker must be timbersome and nice in his
'sociations. But sit down here a bit, Lenny; I've summat to say to ye!"

"To me--"

"To ye. Give the neddy a shove out i' the vay, and sit down, I say."

Lenny rather reluctantly, and somewhat superciliously, accepted this
invitation.

"I hears," said the Tinker in a voice made rather indistinct by a couple
of nails which he had inserted between his teeth; "I hears as how you be
unkimmon fond of reading. I ha' sum nice cheap books in my bag
yonder--sum low as a penny."

"I should like to see them," said Lenny, his eyes sparkling.

The Tinker rose, opened one of the paniers on the ass's back, took out a
bag which he placed before Lenny, and told him to suit himself. The
young peasant desired no better. He spread all the contents of the bag
on the sward, and a motley collection of food for the mind was
there--food and poison--_serpentes avibus_--good and evil. Here,
Milton's Paradise Lost, and there The Age of Reason--here Methodist
Tracts, and there True Principles of Socialism--Treatises on Useful
Knowledge by sound learning actuated by pure benevolence--Appeals to
Operatives by the shallowest reasoners, instigated by the same ambition
that had moved Eratosthenes to the conflagration of a temple; works of
fiction admirable as Robinson Crusoe, or innocent as the old English
Baron, besides coarse translations of such garbage as had rotted away
the youth of France under Louis Quinze. This miscellany was an epitome,
in short, of the mixed World of Books, of that vast City of the Press,
with its palaces and hovels, its aqueducts and sewers--which opens all
alike to the naked eye and the curious mind of him to whom you say, in
the Tinker's careless phrase, "suit yourself."

But it is not the first impulse of a nature, healthful and still pure,
to settle in the hovel and lose itself amidst the sewers; and Lenny
Fairfield turned innocently over the bad books, and selecting two of
three of the best, brought them to the tinker and asked the price.

"Why," said Mr. Sprott, putting on his spectacles, "you has taken the
werry dearest: them 'ere be much cheaper, and more hinterestin'."

"But I don't fancy them," answered Lenny; "I don't understand wh