All this belongs to one of the side-shows, to which I promised those who
would take tickets to the main exhibition should have entrance gratis.
If I were writing a poem you would expect, as a matter of course, that
there would be a digression now and then.
To come back to the old house and its former tenant, the Professor of
Hebrew and other Oriental languages. Fifteen years he lived with his
family under its roof. I never found the slightest trace of him
until a few years ago, when I cleaned and brightened with pious hands
the brass lock of "the study," which had for many years been covered
with a thick coat of paint. On that I found scratched; as with a
nail or fork, the following inscription:
E PE
Only that and nothing more, but the story told itself. Master Edward
Pearson, then about as high as the lock, was disposed to immortalize
himself in monumental brass, and had got so far towards it, when a sudden
interruption, probably a smart box on the ear, cheated him of his fame,
except so far as this poor record may rescue it. Dead long ago. I
remember him well, a grown man, as a visitor at a later period; and, for
some reason, I recall him in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes,
standing full before a generous wood-fire, not facing it, but quite the
contrary, a perfect picture of the content afforded by a blazing hearth
contemplated from that point of view, and, as the heat stole through his
person and kindled his emphatic features, seeming to me a pattern of
manly beauty.
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