when this multi-millionaire strolled through the slums on a Saturday
afternoon--Saturday probably being the essayist's pay-day. The withered
woman of the peanut-stand on the corner over against Faneuil Hall Market
knew him for a friend, as did also the blind lead-pencil merchant, whom
Tom Folio, on occasions, safely piloted across the stormy traffic of
Dock Square. _Noblesse oblige!_ He was no stranger in those purlieus.
Without designing to confuse small things with great, I may say that a
certain strip of pavement in North Street could be pointed out as Tom
Folio's Walk, just as Addison's Walk is pointed out on the banks of the
Cherwell at Oxford.

I used to observe that when Tom Folio was not in quest of a print or a
pamphlet or some such urgent thing, but was walking for mere recreation,
he instinctively avoided respectable latitudes. He liked best the
squalid, ill-kept thoroughfares shadowed by tall, smudgy tenement-houses
and teeming with unprosperous, noisy life. Perhaps he had, half
consciously, a sense of subtle kinship to the unsuccess and cheerful
resignation of it all.

Returning home from abroad one October morning several years ago, I was
told that that simple spirit had passed on. His death had been little
heeded; but in him had passed away an intangible genuine bit of Old
Boston--as genuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrat himself--a
personality not to be restored or replaced. Tom Folio could never happen
again!

Strolling to-day through the streets of the older section of the town,
I miss many a venerable landmark submerged in the rising tide of change,
but I miss nothing quite so much as I do the sight of Tom Folio entering
the doorway of the Old Corner Bookstore, or carefully taking down