rather one of the earliest that
is burnt into my memory, was committed in the library of what was then
the Young Men's Institute. I spoke out loud! The rebuke that I received
sent me down the stairs overwhelmed with a sense of the enormity of my
crime, yet more than sustained by joy to think that I had escaped the
utter annihilation with which my reprimand was freighted. And I can say
that the awe with which I used to enter that chamber of silence, and the
fear with which I regarded the librarian were the common property of all
the young people of that somewhat remote period. But long since we found
out that the old librarian was one of the gentlest and most inoffensive
men, and that we had misunderstood him as completely as he had
misunderstood us.

But I have no such gloomy recollection, nor to be honest, have I any
recollection at all of the Wadsworth Athenaeum gallery, because, like
everybody else who then lived in Hartford, I never went in there. The
door was often open and the only sentinel on guard had no more
formidable weapon than a pair of knitting-needles. But no one ever
crossed that threshold. The simple legend, traced on a placard at the
door, "Admission Ten Cents," did the business, or rather, to be more
elegant as well as accurate, prevented any business being done. The
people who came up the stone steps read the notice and turned off to the
left to the library or to the right to the Historical Society, where
entrance was free. I say free, but freedom must have its limits if we
are to have safety, so the tin sign on the outside of the door gave
notice to the always unwelcome boy that he could not go in until he
reached the mature age of twelve years. That was one of the things that
I wanted to grow to full manhood for.

And I well remember my first visit there. As I walked slowly up the
stairs I wondered what venerable monument of patriotic achievement, what
new inspiration to love for our noble State whose history is such a
priceless treasure, what vision of heroic self-sacrifice in her behalf
would first burst upon my eager eyes when I should look around the hall.
I looked and lo! there in a glass jar stood the chaste but familiar
figure of Charles Hosmer's night-blooming cereus--the modest pioneer of
the canned-fruit industry in this community.

I have made this brief review in order to suggest to you the state of
innocuous desuetude in which for more or less time the various miscalled
interests i