and the first thing I beg leave to introduce relates to these.

Do not throw this volume down, or turn to another page, when I tell you
that the earliest of them, that of which I now am about to speak, was
opened more than fifty years ago. This is a very dangerous confession,
for fifty years make everything hopelessly old-fashioned, without giving
it the charm of real antiquity. If I could say a hundred years, now, my
readers would accept all I had to tell them with a curious interest; but
fifty years ago,--there are too many talkative old people who know all
about that time, and at best half a century is a half-baked bit of ware.
A coin-fancier would say that your fifty-year-old facts have just enough
of antiquity to spot them with rust, and not enough to give them--the
delicate and durable patina which is time's exquisite enamel.

When the first Portfolio was opened the coin of the realm bore for its
legend,--or might have borne if the more devout hero-worshippers could
have had their way,--Andreas Jackson, Populi Gratia, Imp. Caesar. Aug.
Div., Max., etc., etc. I never happened to see any gold or silver with
that legend, but the truth is I was not very familiarly acquainted with
the precious metals at that period of my career, and, there might have
been a good deal of such coin in circulation without my handling it, or
knowing much about it.

Permit me to indulge in a few reminiscences of that far-off time.

In those days the Athenaeum Picture Gallery was a principal centre of
attraction to young Boston people and their visitors. Many of us got our
first ideas of art, to say nothing of our first lessons in the
comparatively innocent flirtations of our city's primitive period, in
that agreeable resort of amateurs and artists.