For obvious
reasons these pets of his childhood are unrepresented among the
memorials so piously preserved in the Hymen Museum; but through
the kindness of our esteemed townswoman, Mrs. (or, as she is
commonly called, 'Mother') Hancock, aged ninety-one, we are able
to include in our collection a marble of the kind known as
'glass-alley,' with which she avers that, at the age of ten or
thereabouts, our future hero disported himself. It must have
been by some premonition that the venerable lady cherished it,
having received it originally, as she remembers, in barter for a
pennyworth of saffron cake, a species of delicacy to which the
youthful Solomon was pardonably addicted. . . .'
"I got to show that damned glass-alley," interjected Mr. Tamblyn.
"Why? Because a man past work can't stay his belly on the interest
o' fifty pound. Oh, but there's more about it:
"'The cobble-stones with which the streets of Troy are paved do
not lend themselves readily to expertness in shooting with
marbles. But the subject of this memoir was ever one who,
adapting himself to difficulties, rose superior to them.
The glass material of which the relic is composed shows numerous
indentations in its spherical outline, eloquent testimony to the
character which had already begun to learn the lesson of
greatness and by perseverance to bend circumstances to its will.
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