mething
in a profession.

The school went on, Mr. Walker studying law meantime till he had passed
his examination, when it was transferred to Mr. B. P. Hunt. With this
man, who became and remained my intimate friend till his death, thirty
years after, came the first faint intimation of what was destined to be
the most critical, the most singular, and by far the most important
period of my life.

Mr. Hunt was, as he himself declared to me in after years, not at all
fitted to be a schoolmaster. He lacked the minor or petty earnestness of
character, and even the training or preparation, necessary for such work.
On the other hand, he had read a great deal in a desultory way; he was
very fond of all kinds of easy literature; and when he found that any boy
understood the subject, he would talk with that boy about whatever he had
been reading. Yet there was something real and stimulative in him, for
there never was a man in Philadelphia who kept school for so short a time
and with so few pupils who had among them so many who in after life
became more or less celebrated. For he certainly made all of us who were
above idiocy think and live in thought above the ordinary range of school-
boy life. Thus I can recall these two out of many incidents:--

Finding me one day at an old book-stand, he explained to me Alduses, and
Elzevirs, and bibliography, showing me several specimens, all of which I
remembered.

I had read Watson's "Annals of Philadelphia." [By the way, I knew the
daughter of the author.] There was an allusion in it to Cornelius
Agrippa, and Mr. Hunt explained and dilated on this great sorcerer to me
till I became half crazy to read the "Occult Philosophy," which I did at
a roaring rate two years later.

One day I saw Mr. Hunt and Mr. Kendall chuckling together over a book. I
divined a secret. Now, I was a very honourable boy, and never pried into
secrets, but where a quaint old book was concerned I had no more
conscience than a pirate. And seeing Mr. Hunt put the book into his
desk, I abode my time till he had gone forth, when I raised the lid, and
. . .

Merciful angels and benevolent fairies! it was Urquhart's translation of
Rabelais! One short spell I read, no more; but it raised a devil which
has never since been laid. Ear hath not heard, it hath not entered into
the heart of man to conceive, what I felt as I realised, like a young
giant just awakened, that there was in me a stupendous mental str