needed only a trip to the Public Library. Any attendant would direct me to
the proper shelf. Yet once in the building, my courage oozed. My question,
though serious, seemed too ridiculous to be asked. I would sizzle as I
met the attendant's eye. Of a consequence, I fumbled on my own devices,
possibly to the increase of my general knowledge, but without gaining what
I sought.

They had no book in the Bath shop on piracy in Cornwall. I was offered
instead a work in two volumes on the notorious highwaymen of history, and
for a moment my plot swerved in that direction. But I put it by. To pay the
fellow for his pains--for he had dug in barrels to his shoulders and had a
smudge across his nose--I bought a copy of Thomson's "Castle of Indolence,"
and in my more energetic moods I read it. And so I came away.

On leaving the shop, lest I should be nipped in a neglect, I visited the
Roman baths. Then I took the waters in the Assembly Room. It was Sam
Weller, you may recall, who remarked, when he was entertained by the select
footmen, that the waters tasted like warm flat-irons. Finally, I viewed
the Crescent around which the shirted Winkle ran with the valorous Dowler
breathing on his neck. With such distractions, as you may well imagine,
Cornish pirates became as naught. Such mental vibration as I had was now
gone toward a tale of fashion in the days when Queen Anne was still alive.
Of a consequence, I again sought the bookshop and stifling my timidity, I
demanded such volumes as might set me most agreeably to my task.

I have in mind also a bookshop of small pretension in a town in Wales. For
purely secular delight, maybe, it was too largely composed of Methodist
sermons. Hell fire burned upon its shelves with a warmth to singe so poor a
worm as I. Yet its signboard popped its welcome when I had walked ten miles
of sunny road. Possibly it was the chair rather than the divinity that