painfully ashamed. He published a brief history of the man and of his
doings in the newspapers.

"The British people," says Voltaire, "may be very stupid, but they know
how to give."

Money rained down upon the old philosopher, until a sum equal to about
sixteen hundred dollars had reached him, which abundantly sufficed for
his maintenance during the short residue of his life. For the first time
in fifty years he had a new and warm suit of clothes, and he again sat
down by his own cheerful fire, an independent man, as he had been all
his life until he could no longer exercise his trade.

He died soon after, bequeathing the money he had received for the
foundation of scholarships and prizes for the encouragement of the study
of natural science among the boys and girls of his country. His valuable
library, also, he bequeathed for the same object.

JAMES LACKINGTON,

SECOND-HAND BOOKSELLER.

It would seem not to be so very difficult a matter to buy an article for
fifty cents and sell it for seventy-five. Business men know, however,
that to live and thrive by buying and selling requires a special gift,
which is about as rare as other special gifts by which men conquer the
world. In some instances, it is easier to make a thing than to sell it,
and it is not often that a man who excels in the making succeeds equally
well in the selling. General George P. Morris used to say:--

"I know a dozen men in New York who could make a good paper, but among
them all I do not know one who could sell it."

The late Governor Morgan of New York had this talent in a singular
degree even as a boy. His uncle sent him to New York, to buy, among
other things, two or three hundred bushels of corn. He bought two
cargoes, and sold them to advantage in Hartford on his way from the
stage office to his uncle's store, and he kept on doing similar things
all his life. He knew by a sort of intuition when it was safe to buy
twenty thousand bags of coffee, or all the coffee there was for sale in
New York, and he was very rarely mistaken; he had a genius for buying
and selling.

I have seen car-boys and news-boys who had this gift. There are boys who
will go through a train and hardly ever fail to sell a book or two. They
improve every chance. If there is a passenger who wants a book, or can
be made to think he wants one, the boy will find him out.

Now James Lackington was a boy of that kind. In the preface to the
Memoirs which he wrote