"
I asked if he had never found relief, and a stimulant to work, in the
reading aloud of some favorite old author.
"Often," said he; "and none are more effective with me for this service
than the sacred writers; I think I have waked a good many sleeping
fancies by the reading of a chapter in Isaiah."
In answer to inquiries of mine in regard to the incomplete state of
several of the stories of "Wolfert's Roost," he said: "Yes, we do not
get through all we lay out. Some of those sketches had lain in my mind
for a great many years; they made a sort of garret-trumpery, of which I
thought I would make a general clearance, leaving the odds and ends to
take care of themselves.
"There was a novel too, I once laid out, in which an English lad, being
a son of one of the old Regicide Judges, was to come over to New England
in search of his father: he was to meet with a throng of adventures, and
to arrive at length upon a Saturday night, in the midst of a terrible
thunder-storm, at the house of a stern old Massachusetts Puritan, who
comes out to answer to the rappings; and by a flash of lightning which
gleams upon the harsh, iron visage of the old man, the son fancies he
recognizes his father.
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