taking down a volume from the
shelf a sealed letter escaped from the pages and fluttered to my feet. I
handed it to Mr. Lowell, who glanced incuriously at the superscription.
"Oh, yes," he said, smiling, "I know 'em by instinct." Relieved of its
envelope, the missive turned out to be eighteen months old, and began
with the usual amusing solecism: "As one of the most famous of American
authors I would like to possess your autograph."

Each recipient of such requests has of course his own way of responding.
Mr. Whittier used to be obliging; Mr. Longfellow politic; Mr. Emerson,
always philosophical, dreamily confiscated the postage stamps.

Time was when the collector contented himself with a signature on a
card; but that, I am told, no longer satisfies. He must have a letter
addressed to him personally--"on any subject you please," as an immature
scribe lately suggested to an acquaintance of mine. The ingenuous
youth purposed to flourish a letter in the faces of his less fortunate
competitors, in order to show them that he was on familiar terms with
the celebrated So-and-So. This or a kindred motive is the spur to many
a collector. The stratagems he employs to compass his end are
inexhaustible. He drops you an off-hand note to inquire in what year you
first published your beautiful poem entitled "A Psalm of Life." If you
are a simple soul, you hasten to assure him that you are not the author
of that poem, which he must have confused with your "Rime of the
Ancient Mariner"--and there you are. Another expedient is to ask if your
father's middle name was not Hierophilus. Now, your father has probably
been dead many years, and as perhaps he was not a public man in his day,
you are naturally touched that any one should have interest in him after
this long flight of time. In the innocence of your heart you reply by
the next mail that your father's middle name was not Hierophilus, but
Epaminondas--and there you are again. It is humiliating to be caught
swinging, like a simian ancestor, on a branch of one's genealogical
tree.

Some morning you find beside your plate at breakfast an imposing
parchment with a great gold seal in the upper left-hand corner. This
document--I am relating an actual occurrence--announces with a flourish
that you have unanimously been elected an honorary member of The
Kalamazoo International Literary Association. Possibly the honor does
not take away your respiration; but you are bound by courtesy to m