I expected never to be married; perhaps to earn twelve or fifteen hundred dollars a year, which would enable me to have a room of my own in some quiet house, and to earn enough to collect rare books that could be had without much cost.

I can honestly say with George Herbert: "I protest and I vow I even study thrift, and yet I am scarce able, with much ado, to make one half year's allowance shake hands with the other.

And yet if a book of four or five shillings come in my way, I buy it, though I fast for it; yea, sometimes of ten shillings." But I happened one night in the autumn of 1850 to be at a great mass meeting in the City Hall, at Worcester, which Charles Allen was expected to address.

It was the year of the Compromise Measures, including the Fugitive Slave Law, and of Daniel Webster's 7th of March speech.

Judge Allen, as he was somewhat apt to do, came in late.