littering crescents live forever, and creates a
love for Spain and a romance of old Spain which can never die.

After this, I had a cold mental douche. I was given "Les Enfants des
Bois," by Elie Berthet in French, to translate word for word. It was a
horrible task, and the difficulties of the verbs and the laborious
research in the dictionary prevented me from enjoying the adventures of
these infants. I cannot remember anything that happened to them; but I
know that the book gave me an ever-enduring distrust of the subjunctive
mood in the Gallic language. Somebody had left about a copy of a French
romance called "Les Aventures de Polydore Marasquin." It was of things
that happened to a man in a kingdom of monkeys. It went very well, with
an occasional use of the dictionary, until I discovered that the
gentleman was about to engage himself to a very attractive monkeyess. I
gave up the book in disgust, but I have since discovered that there have
been lately several imitators of these adventures, which I think were
written by an author named L['e]on Gozlan.

About this time, the book auction became a fashion in Philadelphia. If
your people had respect for art, they invariably subscribed to a
publication called the _Cosmopolitan Art Magazine_, and you received a
steel engraving of Shakespeare and his Friends, with Sir Walter Raleigh
very much in the foreground, wearing a beautifully puffed doublet and
very well-fitting hose, and another steel engraving of Washington at
Lexington. If your people were interested in literature, they frequented
the book auctions. My father had a great respect for what he called
"classical literature." He considered Cowper's "The Task" immensely
classical; it was beautifully bound, and he never read it. One day he
secured a lovely edition of the "Complete Works of Thomas Moore." It had
been a subject of much competition at the auction, and was cherished
accordingly. The binding was tooled. It was put on the centre table and
adored as a work of art. Here was richness!

Tom Moore's long poems are no doubt classed at present as belonging to
those old and faded gardens in which "The Daisy" and "The Keepsake," by
Lady Blessington, once flourished; but if I could only recall the
pleasure I had in the reading of "Lalla Rookh" and "The Veiled Prophet
of Korhasson," I think I should be very happy. And the notes to "Lalla
Rookh" and to Moore's prose novel of "The Epicurean"! "The Epicurean"
was not muc