I might have found myself in a lunatic asylum. I never saw Lamb again,
and very soon after that meeting I came to America."

[Illustration: AN ENCOUNTER WITH CHARLES LAMB.]




II


"There are two points about your story that I do not comprehend," said
I (and as I spoke I could not help the thought that in reality I did not
comprehend any of it). "In the first place, I don't see how you could
live for a generation or two in one place and then go off to an entirely
new locality. I should think there were not enough inhabited spots in
the world to accommodate you in such extensive changes."

Mr. Crowder smiled. "I don't wonder you ask that question," he said; "but
in fact it was not always necessary for me to seek new places. There are
towns in which I have taken up my residence many times. But as I arrived
each time as a stranger from afar, and as these sojourns were separated
by many years, there was no one to suppose me to be a person who had
lived in that place a century or two before."

"Then you never had your portrait painted," I remarked.

"Oh, yes, I have," he replied. "Toward the close of the thirteenth century
I was living in Florence, being at that time married to a lady of wealthy
family, and she insisted upon my having my portrait painted by Cimabue,