dignity, and some of the lawns were lovely.

With eyes singling out each familiar object I loitered along the walk.
There stood the grimy wagon shop from which a hammer was ringing
cheerily, like the chirp of a cricket,--just as aforetime. Orrin Blakey
stood at the door of his lumber yard surveying me with curious eyes but
I passed him in silence. I wished to spend an hour or two in going about
in guise of a stranger. There was something instructive as well as
deliciously exciting in thus seeing old acquaintances as from behind a
mask. They were at once familiar and mysterious--mysterious with my new
question, "Is this life worth living?"

The Merchants' Hotel which once appeared so luxurious (within the reach
only of great lecturers like Joseph Cook and Wendell Phillips) had
declined to a shabby frame tavern, but entering the dining room I
selected a seat near an open window, from which I could look out upon
the streets and survey the throng of thickening sightseers as they moved
up and down before me like the figures in a vitascope.

I was waited upon by a slatternly girl and the breakfast she brought to
me was so bad (after Mary's cooking) that I could only make a pretense
of eating it, but I kept my seat, absorbed by the forms coming and
going, almost within the reach of my hand. Among the first to pace
slowly by was Lawyer Ricker, stately, solemn and bibulous as ever, his
red beard flowing over a vest unbuttoned in the manner of the
old-fashioned southern gentleman, his spotless linen and neat tie
showing that his careful, faithful wife was still on guard.

Him I remembered for his astounding ability to recite poetry by the hour
and also because of a florid speech which I once heard him make in the
court room. For six mortal hours he spoke on a case involving the
stealing of a horse-blanket worth about four dollars and a half. In the
course of his argument he ranged with leisurely self-absorption, from
ancient Egypt and the sacred Crocodile down through the dark ages,
touching at Athens and Mount Olympus, reviewing Rome and the court of
Charlemagne, winding up at four P. M. with an impassioned appeal to the
jury to remember the power of environment upon his client. I could not
remember how the suit came out, but I did recall the look of
stupefaction which rested on the face of the accused as he found himself
likened to Gurth the swine-herd and a peasant of Carcassone.

Ricker seemed quite unchanged save for t