f infinite jest in his day; he was sober
enough now, and in no way disposed to indulge in those flashes of
merriment "that were wont to set the table on a roar." But I did not
regret his evaporated hilarity; I liked his more befitting genial
silence, and had learned to look upon his rather open countenance with
the same friendliness as that with which I regarded the faces of
less phantasmal members of the club. He had become to me a dramatic
personality as distinct as that of any of the Thespians I met in the
grillroom or the library.

Yorick's feeling in regard to me was a subject upon which I frequently
speculated. There was at intervals an alert gleam of intelligence in
those cavernous eye-sockets, as if the sudden remembrance of some old
experience had illumined them. He had been a great traveler, and had
known strange vicissitudes in life; his stage career had brought him
into contact with a varied assortment of men and women, and extended
his horizon. His more peaceful profession of holding up mail-coaches on
lonely roads had surely not been without incident. It was inconceivable
that all this had left no impressions. He must have had at least a faint
recollection of the tempestuous Junius Brutus Booth. That Yorick
had formed his estimate of me, and probably not a flattering one, is
something of which I am strongly convinced.

At the death of Edwin Booth, poor Yorick passed out of my personal
cognizance, and now lingers an incongruous shadow amid the memories of
the precious things I lost then.

The suite of apartments formerly occupied by Edwin Booth at The Players
has been, as I have said, kept unchanged--a shrine to which from time to
time some loving heart makes silent pilgrimage. On a table in the
centre of his bedroom lies the book just where he laid it down, an ivory
paper-cutter marking the page his eyes last rested upon; and in this
chamber, with its familiar pictures, pipes, and ornaments, the skull
finds its proper sanctuary. If at odd moments I wish that by chance poor
Yorick had fallen to my care, the wish is only halfhearted, though had
that happened, I would have given him welcome to the choicest corner
in my study and tenderly cherished him for the sake of one who comes no
more.

THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER

One that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
--_King Lear._

THE material for this paper on the autograph hunter, his ways and his
manners, has been drawn chiefly from experience