ave himself to
collect the scattered papers and documents of the old Professor. The old
man--accustomed ever to an existence of emergency--was in the habit of
pledging his private papers and his own writings for small sums here and
there through the country; and thus researches which had cost months
of labor, investigations of deepest import, were oftentimes pawned at a
public for a few shillings. Scarcely a day went over without some record
being brought in by a farmer or a small village tradesman; sometimes
valueless, sometimes of great interest. Now and then they would be
violent and rebellious pasquinades against men in power,--his supposed
enemies,--versified slanders upon imaginary oppressors.

Neither imbued with Alfred's taste nor influenced by the ties of blood,
Quackinboss took a pleasure in poring over these documents which the
young man could not feel. The Professor, to him, seemed the true type
of intellectual power, and he had that bold recklessness of all
consequences which appealed strongly to the Yankee. He was, as he
phrased it, an "all-mighty smasher," and would have been a rare man for
Congress! All Alfred's eagerness to possess himself of his father's
papers was soon exceeded by the zeal of Quackinboss, who, by degrees,
abandoned gun and rod to follow out his new pursuit If he could not
estimate the value of deep scientific calculations and researches, he
was fully alive to the sparkling wit and envenomed satire of the various
attacks upon individuals; and so enamored was he of these effusions,
that many of the verse ones he had committed to memory.

Poor Alfred! what a struggle was his, as Quackinboss would recite
some lines of fearful malignity, asking him, the while "if all English
literature could show such another ''tarnal screamer' as his own parent?
Warn't he a 'right-down scarification'? Did n't he scald the hides of
them old hogs in the House of Lords? Well, I 'm blest if Mr. Clay could
a-done it better!" To the young man's mild suggestions that his father's
fame would rest upon very different labors, Quackinboss would hastily
offer rejoinder, "No, sir, chemicals is all very well, but human natur'
is a grander study than acids and oxides. What goes on in a man's heart
is a main sight harder reading than salts and sediments."

The Colonel had learned in the course of his wanderings that a farmer
who inhabited one of the lone islands off the coast was in possession
of an old writing-desk of