acinthine curls it beamed on him with a fixed
benevolent smile.

"Not that Hymen hadn't decent qualities, mind you," Cai Tamblyn
continued. "The fellow was plucky, and well-meanin', too, in his
way; and a better master you wouldn't find in a day's march. What he
suffered from was wind in his stomach. With all the women settin'
their caps at him he couldn't help it: but so 'twas. And the men
were a'most as bad. Just you hearken to this--"

Cai seated himself on the edge of the bed again, felt in his
breast-pocket and drew out a spectacle-case and a folded pocket-book;
adjusted the spectacles on his nose, slapped the pocket-book
viciously, spread it on his knee, cleared his throat, and began to
read:

"'As a boy he was studious in his habits, shy in company,
unflinchingly truthful, and fond of animals. For obvious
reasons these pets of his childhood are unrepresented among the
memorials so piously preserved in the Hymen Museum; but through
the kindness of our esteemed townswoman, Mrs. (or, as she is
commonly called, 'Mother') Hancock, aged ninety-one, we are able
to include in our collection a marble of the kind known as
'glass-alley,' with which she avers that, at the age of ten or
thereabouts, our future hero disported himself. It must have
been by some premonition that the venerable lady cherished it,
having received it originally, as she remembers, in barter for a
pennyworth of saffron cake, a species of delicacy to which the
youthful Solomon was pardonably addicted. . . .'

"I got to show that damned glass-alley," interjected Mr. Tamblyn.
"Why? Because a man past work can't stay his belly on the interest
o' fifty pound. Oh, but there's more about it:

"'The cobble-stones with which the streets of Troy are paved do
not lend themselves readily to expertness in shooting with
marbles. But the subject of this memoir was ever one who,
adapting himself to difficulties, rose superior to them.
The glass material of which the relic is composed shows numerous
indentations in its spherical outline, eloquent testimony to the
character which had already begun to learn the lesson of
greatness and by perseverance to bend circumstances to its will.
In the case containing this relic, and beside it, reposes a
horn-book, used for many generations in the Troy Infant School,
conducted A.D. 1739-1782 by Mis