ain

'Waled a portion with judicious care'

for quotation in their columns. The _Patchwork_ stories thus got into
circulation one by one. Kind friends of Mr. Locker's, who had been
told, or had discovered for themselves, that he was somewhat of a wag,
would frequently regale him with bits of his own _Patchwork_,
introducing them to his notice as something they had just heard, which
they thought he would like--murdering his own stories to give him
pleasure. His countenance on such occasions was a _rendezvous_ of
contending emotions, a battlefield of rival forces. Politeness ever
prevailed, but it took all his irony and sad philosophy to hide his
pain. _Patchwork_ is such a good collection of the kind of story he
liked best that it was really difficult to avoid telling him a story
that was _not_ in it. I made the blunder once myself with a Voltairean
anecdote. Here it is as told in _Patchwork_: 'Voltaire was one day
listening to a dramatic author reading his comedy, and who said, "Ici
le chevalier rit!" He exclaimed: "Le chevalier est _bien_ heureux!"' I
hope I told it fairly well. He smiled sadly, and said nothing, not
even _Et tu, Brute_!

In 1886 Mr. Locker printed for presentation a catalogue of his printed
books, manuscripts, autograph letters, drawings, and pictures. Nothing
of his own figures in this catalogue, and yet in a very real sense the
whole is his. Most of the books are dispersed, but the catalogue
remains, not merely as a record of rareties and bibliographical
details dear to the collector's heart, but as a token of taste. Just
as there is, so Wordsworth reminds us, 'a spirit in the woods,' so is
there still, brooding over and haunting the pages of the 'Rowfant
Catalogue,' the spirit of true connoisseurship. In the slender lists
of Locker's 'Works' this book must always have a place.

Frederick Locker died at Rowfant on May 30, 1895, leaving behind him,
carefully prepared for the press, a volume he had christened _My
Confidences: An Autographical Sketch addressed to My Descendants_.

In due course the book appeared, and was misunderstood at first by
many. It cut a strange, outlandish figure among the crowd of casual
reminiscences it externally resembled. Glancing over the pages of _My
Confidences_, the careless library subscriber encountered the usual
number of names of well-known personages, whose appearance is supposed
by publishers to add sufficient zest to reminiscences to secure
for