the purpose very fine-pointed pens. With his manuscript he took the
greatest pains, often going to infinite trouble to illuminate his
letters. Among his friends these letters are held as curiosities of
literature, hardly more for the quaint sentiments expressed than for the
queer designs in colored inks which embellished them. He was specially
fond of drawing weird elves and gnomes, and would spend an hour or two
decorating with these comical figures a letter he had written in ten
minutes. He was as fastidious with the manuscript for the office as if
it had been a specimen copy for exhibition, and it was always understood
that his manuscript should be returned to him after it had passed
through the printers' hands. In this way all the original copies of his
stories and poems have been preserved, and those which he did not give
to friends as souvenirs have been bound for his children.

A taste for literary composition might not have passed, as doubtless it
did pass, so many years unnoticed, had he been deficient in other
talents, and had he devoted himself exclusively to writing. But as a boy
he was fond, though in a less degree than many boys, of athletic sports,
and his youthful desire for theatrical entertainments, pen caricaturing,
and dallying with his pets took up much of his time. Yet he often gave
way to a fondness for composition, and there is in the family
possession a sermon which he wrote before he was ten years of age, in
which he showed the results of those arduous Sabbath days in the old
Congregational meeting-house. And at one time, when yet very young, he
was at the head of a flourishing boys' paper, while at another, fresh
from the inspiration of a blood-curdling romance in a New York Weekly,
he prepared a series of tales of adventure which, unhappily, have not
been preserved. In his college days he was one of the associate editors
of the university magazine, and while at that time he had no serious
thought of devoting his life to literature, his talents in that