," said Lenny, his eyes sparkling.

The tinker rose, opened one of the panniers on the ass's back, took out
a bag, which he placed before Lenny, and told him to suit himself. The
young peasant desired no better. He spread all the contents of the
bag on the sward, and a motley collection of food for the mind was
there,--food and poison, serpentes avibus good and evil. Here Milton's
Paradise Lost, there "The Age of Reason;" here Methodist Tracts, there
"True Principles of Socialism,"--Treatises on Useful Knowledge by sound
learning actuated by pure benevolence, Appeals to Operatives by the
shallowest reasoners, instigated by the same ambition that had moved
Eratosthenes to the conflagration of a temple; works of fiction
admirable as "Robinson Crusoe," or innocent as "The Old English Baron,"
beside coarse translations of such garbage as had rotted away the youth
of France under Louis Quinze. This miscellany was an epitome, in short,
of the mixed World of Books, of that vast city of the Press, with its
palaces and hovels, its aqueducts and sewers, which opens all alike
to the naked eye and the curious mind of him to whom you say, in the
tinker's careless phrase, "Suit yourself."

But it is not the first impulse of a nature healthful and still pure
to settle in the hovel and lose itself amidst the sewers; and Lenny
Fairfield turned innocently over the bad books, and selecting two or
three of the best, brought them to the tinker, and asked the price.

"Why," said Mr. Sprott, putting on his spectacles, "you has taken the
werry dearest: them 'ere be much cheaper, and more hinterestin'."

"But I don't fancy them," answered Lenny; "I don't understand what they
are about, and this seems to tell one how the steam-engine is made, and
has nice plates; and this is 'Robinson Crusoe,' which Parson Dale once
said he would give me--I'd rather buy it out of my own money."

"Well, please yourself," quoth the tinker; "you shall have the books for
four bob, and you can pay me next month."

"Four bobs, four shillings? it is a great sum," said Lenny; "but I will
lay by, as you are kind enough to trust me: good-evening, Mr. Sprott."

"Stay a bit," said the tinker; "I'll just throw you these two little
tracts into the bargain; they be only a shilling a dozen, so 't is
but tuppence,--and ven you has read those, vy, you'll be a regular
customer."

The tinker tossed to Lenny Nos. 1 and 2 of "Appeals to Operatives," and
the peasant took them