John Hallum, the little collector of curiosities whom I had made
the arch magician, had been for six years a resident of the
place, and had decorated this final nestling-place of his old age
with relics and rarities picked up in the course of his life.
According to his own account, he had been somewhat of a
traveller, having been once in France, and very near making a
visit to Holland. He regretted not having visited the latter
country, "as then he might have said he had been there." He was
evidently a traveller of the simple kind.
He was aristocratical too in his notions, keeping aloof, as I
found, from the ordinary run of pensioners. His chief associates
were a blind man who spoke Latin and Greek, of both which
languages Hallum was profoundly ignorant, and a broken-down
gentleman who had run through a fortune of forty thousand pounds
left him by his father, and ten thousand pounds, the marriage
portion of his wife. Little Hallum seemed to consider it an
indubitable sign of gentle blood as well as of lofty spirit to be
able to squander such enormous sums.
P.S.--The picturesque remnant of old times into which I have thus
beguiled the reader is what is called the Charter House,
originally the Chartreuse.
Pages:
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373