ntry, whither he often resorted to pass not hours only, but
frequently entire days, in solitary wanderings,--partly for physical
exercise,--still more, perhaps, to study the botany, the geology, and
the minutest geographical features of the environs; for his restless
mind was perpetually observant, and could not be withheld from external
Nature, even by his poetic and philosophic meditation. In these
excursions, he often passed his fellow-mortals without noticing them. A
friend, if observed, he greeted with a slight nod, and possibly stopped
him for conversation. Once started on a subject, Percival rarely quitted
it until it was exhausted; and consequently these interviews sometimes
outlasted the leisure of his listener. You excused yourself, perhaps;
or you were called away by some one else; but you had only put off the
conclusion of the discourse, not escaped it. The next time Percival
encountered you, his first words were, "As I was saying,"--and taking
up the thread of his observations where it had been broken, he went
straight to the end.

The excellent bookstore of the late Hezekiah Howe, one of the best in
New England, and particularly rich in those rare and costly works
which form a bookworm's delight, was one of Percival's best-loved
lounging-places. He bought freely, and, when he could not buy, he was
welcome to peruse: He read with marvellous rapidity, skipping as if by
instinct everything that was unimportant; avoiding the rhetoric, the
commonplaces, the falsities; glancing only at what was new, what was
true, what was suggestive, he had a distinct object in view; but it was
not to amuse himself, nor to compare author with author; it was simply
to increase the sum of his own knowledge. Perhaps it was in these rapid
forays through unbought, uncut volumes, that he acquired his singular
habit of reading books, even his own, without subjecting them to the
paper-knife. People who wanted to see Percival and obtain his views on
special topics were accustomed to look for him at Mr. Howe's, and always
found him willing to pour forth his voluminous information.

His income at this time was derived solely from literary jobs, and was
understood to be very limited. What he earned he spent chiefly for
books, particularly for such as would assist him in perfecting that
striking monument of his varied and profound research, his new
translation and edition of Malte-Brun. For this labor the time had been
estimated, and the p