General
Washington; a substantial three-storied building with ornamental
woodwork which might cause its later use as a bakery to seem out of
harmony to any but _chefs_ with high ideals of their art.

The Library of old Charleston was composed chiefly of English classics
and the literature of France in the olden time when Europe furnished
us with something more than anarchy, clothes, and bargain-counter
titles. A sample of the Young America of that early day asked an old
gentleman, "Why are you always reading that old Montaigne?" The reply
was, "Why, child, there is in this book all that a gentleman needs to
think about," with the discreet addition, "Not a book for little
girls, though." If we find in our circle of poets a certain
stateliness of style scarcely to be looked for in a somewhat new
republic that might be expected to rush pell-mell after an idea and
capture it by the sudden impact of a lusty blow, after the manner of
the minute-men catching a red-coat at Lexington; if we observe in
their writing old world expressions that woo us subtly, like the odor
of lavender from a long-closed linen chest, we may attribute it to the
fact that aristocratic old Charleston, though the first to assert her
independence of the political yoke, yet clung tenaciously to the
literary ideals of the Old World.

On Meeting Street was Apprentices' Library Hall, where Glidden led his
hearers through the intricacies of Egyptian Archaeology. Here Agassiz
sometimes lectured on Zooelogy, and our youthful poet may have watched
animals from the jungle climb up the blackboard at the touch of what
would have been only a piece of chalk in any other hand, but became a
magic creative force under the guidance of that wizard of science.
Here he could have followed with Thackeray the varying fortunes and
ethic vagaries of the royal Georges. His poetic soul may have kindled
with the fire of Macready's "Hamlet" when, thinking that he was too
far down the slope of life to hark back to the days of the youthful
Dane, he proved that he still had the glow of the olden time in his
soul by reading the part as only Macready could. In this old hall he
may have looked upon the paintings which inspired him to create his
own pictures, luminous with softly tinted word-colors.

Meeting Street seems to have been named with reference to its uses,
for here, too, was the old theatre, gone long ago, where Fannie
Ellsler danced with a wavering, quivering, shimmering gr