a shrewd wrinkled face of the color of parchment, a thick yellow
wig, and a blue cape coat. His practice consisted almost entirely
in drawing wills and executing them after the decease of their
respective testators, whom he invariably outlived, and I think he
regarded me somewhat in the light of a legal joke. He used to send
for me twice a year, for the sole purpose, I believe, of ascertaining
whether or not I was sufficiently nourished at Quirk's establishment.
On these occasions he would take me to lunch with him at the Parker
House, where he invariably ordered scallops and pumpkin pie for me
and a pint of port for himself.

On my departure he would hand me solemnly two of the pieces of
paper currency known as "shin plasters," and bid me always hold my
grandfather's memory in reverence. On one of these occasions, when
he had laid me under a similar adjuration, I asked him whether he
had ever heard of the man who made his son take off his hat whenever
he met a pig--on the ground that his father had made his money in
pork. He stared at me very hard for a moment with his little
twinkling eyes and then suddenly and without any preliminary symptoms
exploded in a cackle of laughter.

"Goddamme," he squeaked, "I wish your gran'ther could a' heard y'
say that!"

Then without further explanation he turned and made his way down
School Street and I did not see him for another six months.

My life at Quirk's was a great improvement over the life I had led
at home in Lynn. In the first place I was in the real country,
and in the second I had the companionship of good-natured, light-
hearted people. The master himself was of the happy-go-lucky sort
who, with a real taste for the finer things of literature and life,
take no thought for the morrow or indeed even for the day. He was
entirely incapable of earning a living and had been successively
an actor, a lecturer, a preacher, and a pedagogue. He was a fine
scholar of Latin and could quote Terence, Horace, and Plautus in
a way that could stir the somnolent soul even of a school-boy.
His chief enemy, next to laziness, was drink. He would disappear
for days at a time into his study, and afterward explain that he
had been engaged in the preparation of his _magnum opus_, which
periodically was just on the point of going to press.

During these interludes the school was run by Mrs. Quirk, a robust,
capable, and rosy Englishwoman, who had almost as much learning as
her hu