Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/371

 among the former one from a piquant young lady, who was herself married at fourteen years of age—she is now only seventeen, but looks as if she were twenty—and who will carry me off this afternoon on a promenade to Bonaventura—some romantic spot. Her dark romantic eyes have something quite interesting in them.

Later.—I have had a visit from the greatest —— autograph collector in the world, Mr. T., who kindly invited me to his house and home at Savannah! and here comes now my Swiss professor, and will talk to me of poetry and religion, and the spirit of things; and now it is dinner-time and I must think about my body, and therefore I must make an end of all. But first a kiss—on the paper and in spirit to my beloved! 

 LETTER XVI. &emsp; “The greatest autograph-collector in the world” is also the most friendly, the best-hearted man in the world, and so kind to me that I shall always think of him with gratitude. His collection of autographs is the first which I have ever been able to examine with interest and respect. Not because it occupies many folios and has a whole room appropriated to it, and could not be fully examined in less than six or seven months, which certainly might inspire respect; but because a portrait is appended to the handwriting of each distinguished person, mostly an excellent copper plate engraving, together with some letter or interesting document belonging to the history of that individual. All this gives to the autograph collection of Mr. T. a real historical or biographical interest.

His house is one of those excellent, agreeable ones