him, and rocked him to sleep each night as the darkness gathered. He
lived over and over again those few sunshiny excursions up the river; and
he knew all the reeds and flowers and birds she liked best, and the
places where they had landed from the boat and lunched together were
forever to him sacred spots.

But the death of his mother put a stop for a time to his collecting. The
sturdy housekeeper who came to take the mother's place, speedily cleared
"the truck" out of the corner, and forbade the bringing of any more
feathers and rabbits' feet into her house--well, I guess so! The birds'
nests, long grasses, reeds, shells and pigeons' wings were tossed
straightway into the fireplace, and went soaring up the chimney in smoke.

The destruction of the collection didn't kill the propensity to collect,
however, any more than you can change a man's opinions by burning his
library. It only dampened the desire for a time. It broke out again after
a few years and continued for considerably more than half a century.
There was a house at Poissy "full to the roof-tiles" of books, marbles,
bronzes and innumerable curios, gathered from every corner of the earth;
and a palace at Paris filled in like manner, for which Ernest Meissonier
had expended more than a million francs.

In the palace at Paris, when the owner was near his threescore years and
ten, he took from a locker a morocco case, and opening it, showed his
friend, Dumas, a long curl of yellow hair; and then he brought out a
curious old white-silk dress, and said to the silent Dumas, "This curl
was cut from my mother's head after her death, and this dress was her
wedding-gown."

A few days after this Meissonier wrote these words in his journal: "It is