familiar. Every one in the crowd had an idealistic picture in
his mind of the actors of the story. It was curious to note that
the presentation which the author gave coincided with the idea
of the majority of his audience. I was fresh from the country
but had with me that evening a rather ultra-fashionable young
lady. She said she was not interested in the lecture because
it represented the sort of people she did not know and never
expected to meet; they were a very common lot. In her subsequent
career in this country and abroad she had to her credit three
matrimonial adventures and two divorces, but none of her husbands
were of the common lot.

Speaking of Dickens, one picture remains indelibly pressed upon
my memory. It was the banquet given him at which Horace Greeley
presided. Everybody was as familiar with Mr. Pickwick and his
portrait by Cruikshank in Dickens's works as with one's father.
When Mr. Greeley arose to make the opening speech and introduce
the guest of the evening, his likeness to this portrait of Pickwick
was so remarkable that the whole audience, including Mr. Dickens,
shouted their delight in greeting an old and welI-beloved friend.

Another educational opportunity came in my way because one of
my uncles was postmaster of the village. Through his post-office
came several high-class magazines and foreign reviews. There
was no rural delivery in those days, and the mail could only be
had on personal application, and the result was that the subscribers
of these periodicals frequently left them a long time before they
were called for. I was an omnivorous reader of everything
available, and as a result these publications, especially the
foreign reviews, became a fascinating source of information and