e in the sight and touch
of them which he would jealously prolong; and when at length the deed
was done, the play selected, and the impatient shopman had brushed the
rest into the grey portfolio, and the boy was forth again, a little late
for dinner, the lamps springing into light in the blue winter's even,
and _The Miller_, or _The Rover_, or some kindred drama clutched against
his side--on what gay feet he ran, and how he laughed aloud in
exultation! I can hear that laughter still. Out of all the years of my
life, I can recall but one home-coming to compare with these, and that
was on the night when I brought back with me the "Arabian
Entertainments" in the fat, old, double-columned volume with the prints.
I was just well into the story of the Hunchback, I remember, when my
clergyman-grandfather (a man we counted pretty stiff) came in behind me.
I grew blind with terror. But instead of ordering the book away, he said
he envied me. Ah, well he might!

The purchase and the first half-hour at home, that was the summit.
Thenceforth the interest declined by little and little. The fable, as
set forth in the play-book, proved to be unworthy of the scenes and
characters: what fable would not? Such passages as: "Scene 6. The
Hermitage. Night set scene. Place back of scene 1, No. 2, at back of
stage and hermitage, Fig. 2, out of set piece, R. H. in a slanting
direction"--such passages, I say, though very practical, are hardly to
be called good reading. Indeed, as literature, these dramas did not much
appeal to me. I forget the very outline of the plots. Of _The Blind_
_Boy_, beyond the fact that he was a most injured prince, and once, I
think, abducted, I know nothing. And _The Old Oak Chest_, what was it
all about? that proscript (1st dress), that prodigious number of
banditti, that old woman with the broom, and the magnificent kitchen in
the third act (was it in the third?)--they are all fallen in a
deliquium, swim faintly in my brain, and mix and vanish.

I cannot deny that joy attended the illumination; nor can I quite
forgive that child who, wilfully foregoing pleasure, stoops to "twopence
coloured." With crimson lake (hark to the sound of it--crimson
lake!--the horns of elf-land are not richer on the ear)--with crimson
lake and Prussian blue a certain purple is to be compounded which, for
cloaks especially, Titian could not equal. The latter colour with
gamboge, a hated name although an exquisite pigment, supplied a gree