the tenant of the glass-house was a nine days' wonder in the town.

A crowd of boys and even many grown men and women would assemble and
stare into the glass-house while we worked; but Fortunio (he gave no
other name) seemed rather to like it than not. Only when some
wiseacres approached my parents with hints that my studies with a
ragged man who lived on snails and garden-stuff were uncommonly like
traffic with the devil, Fortunio, hearing the matter, walked over one
morning to our home and had an interview with my mother. I don't
know what was said; but I know that afterwards no resistance was made
to my visits to the glass-house.

They came to an end in the saddest and most natural way.
One September afternoon I sat construing to Fortunio out of the first
book of Virgil's "Aeneid"--so far was I advanced; and coming to the
passage--

"Tum breviter Dido, vultum demissa, profatur". . .

I had just rendered _vultum demissa_ "with downcast eyes," when the
book was snatched from me and hurled to the far end of the
glass-house. Looking up, I saw Fortunio in a transport of passion.

"Fool--little fool! Will you be like all the commentators? Will you
forget what Virgil has said and put your own nonsense into his golden
mouth?"

He stepped across, picked up the book, found the passage, and then
turning back a page or so, read out--