"Will you permit me to look at it ?" said I.

"With pleasure," he answered, politely handing me the book.

I took the volume, and glanced over the contents.

It was written in blank verse, and appeared to abound in descriptions of scenery; there was much mention of mountains, valleys, streams and waterfalls, harebells, and daffodils.
These descriptions were interspersed with dialogues, which, though they proceeded from the mouths of pedlars and rustics, were of the most edifying description; mostly on subjects moral or metaphysical, and couched in the most gentlemanly and unexceptionable language, without the slightest mixture of vulgarity, coarseness, or piebald grammar.

Such appeared to me to be the contents of the book; but before I could form a very clear idea of them, I found myself nodding, and a surprising desire to sleep coming over me.