yin,” he would say.  “He’s a fine fallow, him.”  The purpose of our excursions was not to seek antiquities or to enjoy famous prospects, but to visit one after another a series of doleful suburbs, for which it was the old gentleman’s chief claim to renown that he had been the sole contractor, and too often the architect besides.  I have rarely seen a more shocking exhibition:  the bricks seemed to be blushing in the walls, and the slates on the roof to have turned pale with shame; but I was careful not to communicate these impressions to the aged artificer at my side; and when he would direct my attention to some fresh monstrosity—­perhaps with the comment, “There’s an idee of mine’s:  it’s cheap and tasty, and had a graand run; the idee was soon stole, and there’s whole deestricts near Glesgie with the goathic adeetion and that plunth,”—­I would civilly make haste to admire and (what I found particularly delighted him) to inquire into the cost of each adornment.  It will be conceived that Muskegon capitol was a frequent and a welcome ground of talk; I drew him all the plans from memory; and he, with the aid of a narrow volume full of figures and tables, which answered (I believe) to the name of Molesworth, and was his constant pocket companion, would draw up rough estimates and make imaginary offers on the various contracts.  Our Muskegon builders he pronounced a pack of cormorants; and the congenial subject, together with my knowledge of architectural terms, the theory of strains, and the prices of materials in the States, formed a strong bond of union between what might have been otherwise an ill-assorted pair, and led my grandfather to pronounce me, with emphasis, “a real intalligent kind of a cheild.”  Thus a second time, as you will presently see, the capitol of my native State had influentially affected the current of my life.

I left Edinburgh, however, with not the least idea that I had done a stroke of excellent business for myself, and singly delighted to escape out of a somewhat dreary house and plunge instead into the rainbow city of Paris.  Every man has his own romance; mine clustered exclusively about the practice of the arts, the life of Latin Quarter students, and the world of Paris as depicted by that grimy wizard, the author of the Comedie Humaine.  I was not disappointed—­I could not have been; for I did not see the facts, I brought them with me ready-made.  Z. Marcas lived next door to me in my ungainly, ill-smelling hotel of the Rue Racine; I dined at my villainous restaurant with Lousteau and with Rastignac:  if a curricle nearly ran me down at a street-crossing, Maxime de Trailles would be the driver.  I dined, I say, at a poor restaurant and lived in a poor hotel; and this was not from need, but sentiment.  My father gave me a profuse allowance, and I might have lived (had I chosen) in the Quartier de l’Etoile and driven to my studies daily.  Had I done so, the glamour must have fled:  I should still have been but Loudon Dodd; whereas now I was a Latin Quarter student, Murger’s successor, living in flesh and blood the life of one of those romances I had loved to read, to re-read, and to dream over, among the woods of Muskegon.