end, signed by
my two witnesses, that they had witnessed the process, and that this was
written with the ink itself! This I gave to Mr. Walker, and could not
understand why he laughed so heartily at it. It was not till several
days after that he explained to me that the ink was the result of the
dregs of the nut-galls which remained in the mortar.

We had not many books, but what we had I read and reread with great
assiduity. Among them were Cooper's novels, Campbell's poems, those of
Byron, and above all, Washington Irving's "Sketch Book," which had great
influence on me, inspiring that intense love for old English literature
and its associations which has ever since been a part of my very soul.
Irving was indeed a wonderful, though not a _startling_ genius; but he
had sympathised himself into such appreciation of the golden memories and
sweet melodies of the olden time, be it American or English, as no writer
now possesses. In my eighth year I loved deeply his mottoes, such as
that from Syr Grey Steel:--

"He that supper for is dight,
He lies full cold I trow this night;
Yestreen to chamber I him led,
This nighte Grey Steel has made his bed."

Lang--not Andrew--has informed us that no copy of the first black-letter
edition of Sir Grey Steel is known to exist. In after years I found in
the back binding of an old folio two pieces of it, each about four inches
square. It has been an odd fatality of mine that whenever a poet existed
in black-letter, I was always sure to peruse him first in that type,
which I always from childhood preferred to any other. To this day I
often dream of being in a book-shop, turning over endless piles of
marvellously quaint parchment bound books in _letres blake_, and what is
singular, they are generally works quite unknown to the world--first
discoveries--unique! And then--oh! then--how bitter is the waking!

There was in Mr. Walker's school library a book, one well known as Mrs.
Trimmer's "Natural History." This I read, as usual, thoroughly and
often, and wrote my name at the end, ending with a long snaky flourish.
Years passed by, and I was at the University, when one evening, dropping
in at an auction, I bought for six cents, or threepence, "a blind bundle"
of six books tied up with a cord. It was a bargain, for I found in it in
good condition the first American editions of De Quincey's "Opium-Eater,"
"The Rejected Addresses," and the Poems of Coleridge. But wha