le. It must, however, be a very superficial
glance which does not discover in it something characteristic,
distinguishing it from other 'second-hand' shops of the same size and
style.

There are, alas! treatises on farriery in the window; geographies,
chemistries, and French grammars, on the trestles outside; for Samuel,
albeit so great a philosopher as indeed to have founded quite a school,
must nevertheless live. Those two cigars and that 'noggin' of whiskey,
which he purchases with such a fine solemnity as he and I go home
together for occasional symposia in his bachelor lodging--those, I say,
come not without sale of such treatises, such geographies, chemistries,
and French grammars.

But I am digressing. There is a distinguishing air, I but meant to say,
about the little shop. Looking closer, one generally finds that it comes
of a choice bit of old binding, or the quaint title-page of some tuneful
Elizabethan. It was an old Crashaw that first drew me inside; and,
though for some reason I did not buy it then, I bought it a year after,
because to it I owed the friendship of Samuel Dale.

And thus for three bright years that little shop came to be, for a daily
hour or so, a blessed palm-tree away from the burden and heat of the
noon, a holy place whither the money-changers and such as sold doves
might never come, let their clamour in the outer courts ring never so
loud. There in Samuel's talk did two weary-hearted bond-servants of
Egypt draw a breath of the Infinite into their lives of the desk; there
could they sit awhile by the eternal springs, and feel the beating of
the central heart.

So it happened one afternoon, about five years ago, that I dropped in
there according to wont. But Samuel was engaged with some one in that
dim corner at the far end of the shop, where his desk and arm-chair,
tripod of that new philosophy, stood: so I turned to a neighbouring
shelf to fill the time. At first I did not notice his visitor; but as,
in taking down this book and that, I had come nearer to the talkers, I
was struck with something familiar in the voice of the stranger. It came
upon me like an old song, and looking up--why, of course, it was
Narcissus!

The letter N does not make one of the initials on the Gladstone bag
which he had with him on that occasion, and which, filled with books,
lay open on the floor close by; nor does it appear on any of those
tobacco-pouches, cigar-cases, or handkerchiefs with which men be