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Two queer anecdotes I must give about another form of author-worship to which we poor vain mortals are occasionally exposed, viz., what Pope called in Belinda’s case “The Rape of the Lock.”  I can remember (as once by Lady——­ in London) more than one such ravishment attempted if not accomplished; but most especially was I in peril at the Philadelphian Exhibition when three duennas who guarded some lady exhibitors (too modest to ask themselves) pursued a certain individual, scissors in hand, like Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, in vain hope of sheared tresses; had they been, like many of our American sisters, both juvenile and lovely, very possible success might have crowned their daring; or, instead of the three seductive graces, had they posed as three intellectual muses, I might have succumbed; but a leash of fates obliged a rapid retreat.  And for a second queer anecdote take this:  a ’cute negro barber had persuaded me to have my hair cut, to which suggestion, as it was hissing hot weather, I agreed.  He had a neat little shop close to a jeweller’s; next morning I passed that shop and noticed my name placarded there, surrounded by gold lockets, for that cunning nigger and his gilded friend were making a rich harvest of my shaved curls.  Sambo can be as sharp as Jonathan, when a freeman, if he likes.

“Interviewing” is another sort of homage nowadays to popular authorship; in America it is very rife,—­and I never came to any city but, immediately on arrival, two or three representatives of opponent editors would call, and very courteously request to be allowed to turn me inside out, and then to report upon me:  I only remember one or two cases (which I will not specify) wherein my inquisitor was not all I could have wished, or treated his patient victim more unkindly than perhaps a venial native humour might make necessary.  Almost always the scribes were fair and gentlemanly.  And in next morning’s papers it was a pleasing excitement to find that one’s extorted opinions on all manner of topics—­social, religious, and political—­were published by tens of thousands in conflicting newspapers, which took partisan views of the obiter dicta of an illustrious being.  I have many of these recorded conversations and comments thereon pasted down in the scrap-books aforesaid.  In England, also, one does not escape; and indeed the pleasure of being examined for publication is here less mixed; for on this side of the Atlantic it has been found dangerous to report what might be damaging to a man socially or financially; although, however, no judicial notice is taken of ridicule or false criticism; and therein an author (however little he may care for it) can be libelled to any extent and without all remedy.  Not but that some of the society papers have treated my unworthiness generously enough,—­in particular, Edmunds’ World, which, with too great severity and too little justice, has been