se and dexterity he gave it. There
was no effort at all about the action, and no apparent idea that any
exhibition of strength was being offered. There was a conquering
comic spontaneity in that exhibition of great muscular power which
irresistibly appealed to the imagination, and made the Queen Street
farrier a god for years to come.

When I was sent to a regular day-school, many years afterwards, there
were legends amongst us of this man's super-normal strength. There was
a great lath of a fellow who kept the "Star and Garter" public-house.
After all this lapse of time one hopes that one may not hit on any
surviving prejudice against the use of names and places. His name was
Tom Woolley, and I saw Pearce set his big hand underneath the chair on
which he sat, and place him on an ordinary table in a smoke-room
for some slight wager of a pint of beer or so. This was one of the
ameliorations of the rigours of a committee meeting, of which my father
was chairman, called to decide on the form of the public reception of
a returning Chartist, who had spent six months in Stafford Gaol for the
expression of such extreme opinions as are now daily enunciated in the
columns of _The Times_.

There are no such liars as schoolboys, and no set of men could possibly
be found who could as religiously believe each other's lies as they do.

We used to invent for each other's delight stories about this particular
hero which went beyond grown-up credence altogether. But there are some
few narratives that survive the application of the laws of evidence. For
instance, it is recorded that, taking advantage of the temporary absence
of a rival smith, he carried away an anvil under his cloak without
exciting suspicion that he was bearing any weight at all.

There was a pork butcher in the High Street who sprang to the most
dazzling height of fame amongst the schoolboys and other well-practised,
self-believing liars of the parish. On the Wednesday the man was as mere
and simple a salesman of dead pig as might be found within the limits
of the land. On the Thursday he had obliterated the memory of the
achievements of Nelson and Six-teen-String Jack. Surveying the
circumstances from a considerable distance, I am inclined to think that
there was some authenticity in the story which sent the whole parish
into a gaping admiration. The tale was that the pork butcher had gone
money-hunting on the afternoon of that eventful day which made a hero of
hi