"for 5 pounds; and I have taken the
glass-house. The rent is only 3 pounds a year, and I shan't live
longer, so that leaves me money to buy books. I shall feed on the
snails in the garden, making soup of them, for there is a beautiful
stove in the glass-house. When is your next half-holiday?"

"On Saturday."

"Very well. I am going away to buy books; but I shall be back by
Saturday, and then you are to come and learn Latin."

It may have been fear or curiosity, certainly it was no desire for
learning, that took me to Gardener Tonken's glass-house next Saturday
afternoon. The goose-driver was there to welcome me.

"Ah, wide-mouth," he cried; "I knew you would be here. Come and see
my library."

He showed me a pile of dusty, tattered volumes, arranged on an old
flower-stand.

"See," said he, "no sorrowful books, only Aristophanes and Lucian,
Horace, Rabelais, Moliere, Voltaire's novels, 'Gil Blas,'
'Don Quixote,' Fielding, a play or two of Shakespeare, a volume or so
of Swift, Prior's Poems, and Sterne--that divine Sterne! And a Latin
Grammar and Virgil for you, little boy. First, eat some snails."

But this I would not. So he pulled out two three-legged stools, and
very soon I was trying to fix my wandering wits and decline _mensa_.

After this I came on every half-holiday for nearly a year. Of course
the tenant of the glass-house was a nine days' wonder in the town.

A crowd of boys and even many grown men and women would assemble and
stare into the glass-house while we worked; but Fortunio (he gave no
other name) seemed rather to like it than not. Only when some
wiseacres approached my parents with hints that my studies with a
ragged man who lived on snails and garden-stuff were uncommonly like
traffic with the devil, Fortunio, hearing the matter, walked over one
morning to our home and had an interview with my mother. I don't
know what was said; but I know that afterwards no resistance was made
to my visits to the glass-house.

They came to an end in the saddest and most natural way.
One September afternoon I sat construing to Fortunio out of the first
book of Virgil's "Aeneid"--so far was I advanced; and coming to the
passage--

"Tum breviter Dido, vultum demissa, profatur". . .

I had just rendered _vultum demissa_ "with downcast eyes," when the
book was snatched from me and hurled to the far end of the
glass-house. Looking up, I saw Fortunio in a transport of passion.

"Fool--l