able to this day to decide whether I was wholly hurt or wholly amused
when, two months afterward, I stumbled over my manuscript, with a neat
price attached to it, in a second-hand bookshop."

Perhaps the most distressing feature of the whole business is the very
poor health which seems to prevail among autograph hunters. No other
class of persons in the community shows so large a percentage of
confirmed invalids. There certainly is some mysterious connection
between incipient spinal trouble and the collecting of autographs. Which
superinduces the other is a question for pathology. It is a fact that
one out of every eight applicants for a specimen of penmanship bases
his or her claim upon the possession of some vertebral disability which
leaves him or her incapable of doing anything but write to authors
for their autograph. Why this particular diversion should be the sole
resource remains undisclosed. But so it appears to be, and the appeal
to one's sympathy is most direct and persuasive. Personally, however,
I have my suspicions, suspicions that are shared by several men of
letters, who have come to regard this plea of invalidism, in the
majority of cases, as simply the variation of a very old and familiar
tune. I firmly believe that the health of autograph hunters, as a class,
is excellent.

ROBERT HERRICK

I

A LITTLE over three hundred years ago England had given to her a poet of
the very rarest lyrical quality, but she did not discover the fact for
more than a hundred and fifty years afterward. The poet himself was
aware of the fact at once, and stated it, perhaps not too modestly, in
countless quatrains and couplets, which were not read, or, if read, were
not much regarded at the moment. It has always been an incredulous world
in this matter. So many poets have announced their arrival, and not
arrived!

Robert Herrick was descended in a direct line from an ancient family
in Lincolnshire, the Eyricks, a mentionable representative of which was
John Eyrick of Leicester, the poet's grandfather, admitted freeman
in 1535, and afterward twice made mayor of the town. John Eyrick or
Heyricke--he spelled his name recklessly--had five sons, the second of
which sought a career in London, where he became a goldsmith, and in
December, 1582, married Julian Stone, spinster, of Bedfordshire, a
sister to Anne, Lady Soame, the wife of Sir Stephen Soame. One of the
many children of this marriage was Robert Herrick.

It i