y
thank me, if I filled ten of his pages with extracts from the rambling
dissertations in S.T.C.'s handwriting which I find in this rare folio,
but I could easily pick out that amount of readable matter from the
margins. One manuscript anecdote, however, I must transcribe from the
last leaf. I think Coleridge got the story from "The Seer."

"An Irish laborer laid a wager with another hod bearer that the latter
could not carry him up the ladder to the top of a house in his hod,
without letting him fall. The bet is accepted, and up they go. There is
peril at every step. At the top of the ladder there is life and the loss
of the wager,--death and success below! The highest point is reached in
safety; the wagerer looks humbled and disappointed. 'Well,' said he,
'you have won; there is no doubt of that; worse luck to you another
time; but at the third story I HAD HOPES.'"

* * * * *

In a quaint old edition of "The Spectator," which seems to have been
through many sieges, and must have come to grief very early in its
existence, if one may judge anything from the various names which are
scrawled upon it in different years, reaching back almost to the date
of its publication, I find this note in the handwriting of Addison,
sticking fast on the reverse side of his portrait. It is addressed to
Ambrose Philips, and there is no doubt that he went where he was
bidden, and found the illustrious Joseph all ready to receive him at a
well-furnished table.

"Tuesday Night.

"Sir,

"If you are at leisure for an hour, your company will be a great
obligation to

"Yr. most humble sev't.

"J. Addison.

"Fountain Tavern."

That night at the "Fountain," perchance, they discussed that war of
words which might then have been raging between the author of the
"Pastorals" and Pope, moistening their clay with a frequency to which
they were both somewhat notoriously inclined.

My friend rides hard her hobby for choice editions, and she hunts with
a will whenever a good old copy of a well-beloved author is up for
pursuit. She is not a fop in binding, but she must have _appropriate_
dresses for her favorites. She knows what

"Adds a precious seeing to the eye"

as well as Hayday himself, and never lets her folios shiver when they
ought to be warm. Moreover, she _reads_ her books, and, like the scholar
in Chaucer, would rather have

"At her beddes head
A twenty bokes, clothed in black an