BOSTON
Printed for Copeland and Day
69 Cornhill 1897

COPYRIGHT 1897 BY COPELAND AND DAY

TO BLISS CARMAN

A patrin, according to Romano Lavo-Lil, is "a Gypsy trail: handfuls of leaves or grass cast by the Gypsies on the road, to denote, to those behind, the way which they have taken." Well, these wild dry whims are patrins dropped now in the open for our tribe; but particularly for you. They will greet you as you lazily come up, and mean: Fare on, and good luck love you to the end! On each have I put the date of its writing, as one might make memoranda of little leisurely adventures in prolonged fair weather; and you will read, in between and all along, a record of pleasant lonely paths never very far from your own, biggest of Romanys! in the thought-country of our common youth.

Ingraham Hill, South Thomaston, Maine,
October 19, 1896.

[Contents]

Page
On the Rabid versus the Harmless Scholar[3]
The Great Playground[13]
On the Ethics of Descent[29]
Some Impressions from the Tudor Exhibition[39]
On the Delights of an Incognito[63]
The Puppy: A Portrait[73]
On Dying Considered as a Dramatic Situation[83]
A Bitter Complaint of the Ungentle Reader[99]
Animum non Coelum[109]
The Precept of Peace[117]
On a Pleasing Encounter with a Pickpocket[131]
Reminiscences of a Fine Gentleman[139]
Irish[153]
An Open Letter to the Moon[169]
The Under Dog[181]
Quiet London[191]
The Captives[205]
On Teaching One's Grandmother How to Suck Eggs[223]
Wilful Sadness in Literature[233]
An Inquirendo into the Wit and Other Good Parts
of His Late Majesty, King Charles the Second		[247]