t had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan
exceedingly, and began to sum up within my mind the many uncommon
felicities in the life of a book-pedler, especially when his character
resembled that of the individual before me. At a high rate was to be
reckoned the daily and hourly enjoyment of such interviews as the
present, in which he seized upon the admiration of a passing stranger
and made him aware that a man of literary taste, and even of literary
achievement, was travelling the country in a showman's wagon. A more
valuable yet not infrequent triumph might be won in his conversations
with some elderly clergyman long vegetating in a rocky, woody, watery
back-settlement of New England, who as he recruited his library from
the pedler's stock of sermons would exhort him to seek a college
education and become the first scholar in his class. Sweeter and
prouder yet would be his sensations when, talking poetry while he sold
spelling-books, he should charm the mind, and haply touch the heart,
of a fair country schoolmistress, herself an unhonored poetess, a
wearer of blue stockings which none but himself took pains to look at.
But the scene of his completest glory would be when the wagon had
halted for the night and his stock of books was transferred to some
crowded bar-room. Then would he recommend to the multifarious company,
whether traveller from the city, or teamster from the hills, or
neighboring squire, or the landlord himself, or his loutish hostler,
works suited to each particular taste and capacity, proving, all the
while, by acute criticism and profound remark, that the lore in his
books was even exceeded by that in his brain. Thus happily would he
traverse the land, sometimes a herald before the march of Mind,
sometimes walking arm in arm with awful Literature, and reaping
everywhere a harvest of real and sensible popularity which the
secluded bookworms by whose toil he lived could never hope for.

"If ever I meddle with literature," thought I, fixing myself in
adamantine resolution, "it shall be as a travelling bookseller."

Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now grown dark about
us, and a few drops of rain came down upon the roof of our vehicle,
pattering like the feet of birds that had flown thither to rest. A
sound of pleasant voices made us listen, and there soon appeared
halfway up the ladder the pretty person of a young damsel whose rosy
face was so cheerful that even amid the gloomy li