some former quarrel about an oak leaf or something. Anyway, Th' Ole Man
silenced his opponent by smothering his batteries--all of which will be
better understood when I explain that Th' Ole Man was large in stature,
bluff, bold and strong-voiced, whereas Cobden-Sanderson is small,
red-headed, meek, and wears bicycle-trousers.

The argument, however, was not quite so serious an affair as I at first
supposed, for it all ended in a laugh and easily ran off into a quiet
debate as to the value of Imperial Japan versus Whatman.

We walked through the various old parlors that now do duty as workrooms
for bright-eyed girls, then over through the Kelmscott Press, and from
this to another old mansion that had on its door a brass plate so polished
and repolished, like a machine-made sonnet too much gone over, that one
can scarcely make out its intent. Finally I managed to trace the legend,
"The Seasons." I was told it was here that Thomson, the poet, wrote his
book. Once back in the library of Kelmscott House, Mr. Ellis and Th' Ole
Man leaned over the great oaken table and renewed, in a gentler key, the
question as to whether Professor Child was justified in his construction
of the Third Canto of the "Canterbury Tales." Under cover of the smoke I
quietly disappeared with Mr. Cockerill, the Secretary, for a better view
of the Kelmscott Press.

This was my first interview with William Morris. By chance I met him
again, some days after, at the shop of Emery Walker in Clifford Court,
Strand. I had been told on divers occasions by various persons that
William Morris had no sympathy for American art and small respect for our
literature. I am sure this was not wholly true, for on this occasion he
told me he had read "Huckleberry Finn," and doted on "Uncle Remus." He
also spoke with affection and feeling of Walt Whitman, and told me that he