case on view in which was displayed the ashy remnant of a pound of
tobacco smoked, and the desiccated remnant of a pound of tobacco chewed,
within so many given minutes by the local champion in these inviting
arts. I am pretty certain now that the local glutton was not identical
with the local champion consumer of tobacco; but at that time I
heaped all these honours on his head, and my belief in his original
responsibility for the launching of the universe was not, so far as I
remember, in any way disturbed by the contemplation of these smaller
attributes of power.

It is something, even in the flights of baby fancy, to have known and
conversed with the origin of all created things. It is perhaps something
of a throwback to be forced to the recognition of that prodigious figure
as it really was. But, after all, it is not quite impossible that a
similar awaking may await the grown man who imagines himself to have
mastered something of the real philosophies of life. The cadaverous
peeler with the abnormal appetite fades out of recollection, and my
next hero is a blacksmith, who, in a countryside once rich in amateur
pugilists, had earned a local distinction for himself before he made a
settlement for life at the "Farriers' Arms," in Queen Street. His
name was Robert Pearce, and he dawns on me as second hero because of
a physical strength which must have been remarkable even when all
allowance for the childish ideal is made.

Sir Ernest Spencer, who was for many years the Parliamentary
representative of my native parish, was an infant schoolfellow of mine,
and on a birthday, or some other such occasion for celebration, his
father made him a present of a small donkey; and we two took the beast
to Bob Pearce's to be shod. I can see the great, broad-shouldered, hairy
farrier at this minute, as if I saw him in a picture, with his smoky
shirt thrown wide open at the collar, and his breast as bearded as his
chin. When the small beast was trotted in to the farriery, the grimy
giant laughed aloud. He stooped, and, placing his great palm under the
donkey's belly, he raised the animal in one hand, and poised him at the
ceiling, swaying him here and there as if he had been a weathervane in
a high and varying wind. I suppose that the donkey was a little donkey;
but I am sure that he was only an averagely little donkey, and that not
one man in a British regiment could have performed Bob Pearce's feat
with any approach to the air of ea