ys most
wretched.

"These clothes I have on," he continued, "were a great success in
America." And then quite irrelevantly and rather hastily, "How often
do large fortunes ruin young men! I should like to be ruined, but I
can get on very well as I am!"

So the lecture dribbled on with little fragments of impertinent
biography, mere pegs for slender witticisms like this:

"When quite a child I used to draw on wood. I drew a small cartload of
raw material over a wooden bridge, the people of the village noticed
me, I drew their attention, they said I had a future before me; up to
that time I had an idea it was behind me."

Or this:

"I became a man. I have always been mixed up with art. I have an uncle
who takes photographs, and I have a servant who takes anything he can
set his hands on."

With one more example from his life among the Mormons, which, perhaps,
though brief, includes a greater variety of wit and humor than any
single passage I could select, I must conclude my memorial glimpses of
this incomparable and lamented humorist.

"I regret to say that efforts were made to make a Mormon of me while I
was in Utah.

"It was leap year when I was there, and seventeen young widows--the
wives of a deceased Mormon (he died by request)--offered me their
hearts and hands. I called upon them one day, and taking their soft,
white hands in mine--which made eighteen hands altogether--I found
them in tears. And I said 'Why is this thus?--what is the reason of
this thusness?'

"They hove a sigh--seventeen sighs of different size. They said--

"'Oh, soon thou wilt be gonested away!'

"I told them that when I got ready to leave a place I usually
wentested. They said--'Doth not like us?'

"I said, 'I doth, I doth!' I also said, 'I hope your intentions are
honorable, as I am a lone child and my parents are far, far away!'

"They then said, 'Wilt not marry us?'

"I said, 'Oh no, it cannot was.'

"Again they asked me to marry them, and again I declined. When they
cried--

"'Oh, cruel man: this is too much--oh, too much!'

"I told them it was on account of the muchness that I declined."

LXI

EDMUND GOSSE VISITS WHITTIER

In December of 1884, Mr. Edmund Gosse, one of the most distinguished
of English critics, visited Whittier at a house called Oak Knoll, in
Massachusetts, where he was then staying with friends. We quote brief
extracts from a report of that visit as published in _Good Words_, an
English