The Tinker rose, opened one of the panniers on the ass's back, took out a bag which he placed before Lenny, and told him to suit himself. The young peasant desired no better. He spread all the contents of the bag on the sward, and a motley collection of food for the mind was there--food and poison--_serpentes avibus_--good and evil. Here, Milton's Paradise Lost, there The Age of Reason--here Methodist tracts, there True Principles of Socialism--Treatises on Useful Knowledge by sound learning actuated by pure benevolence--Appeals to Operatives by the shallowest reasoners, instigated by the same ambition that had moved Eratosthenes to the conflagration of a temple; works of fiction admirable as Robinson Crusoe, or innocent as the Old English Baron, beside coarse translations of such garbage as had rotted away the youth of France under Louis Quinze. This miscellany was an epitome, in short, of the mixed World of Books, of that vast City of the Press, with its palaces and hovels, its aqueducts and sewers--which opens all alike to the naked eye and the curious mind of him to whom you say, in the Tinker's careless phrase, "suit yourself." But it is not the first impulse of a nature, healthful and still pure, to settle in the hovel and lose itself amid the sewers; and Lenny Fairfield turned innocently over the bad books, and selecting two or three of the best, brought them to the Tinker and asked the price. "Why," said Mr. Sprott, putting on his spectacles, "you has taken the werry dearest: them 'ere be much cheaper, and more hinterestin'." "But I don't fancy them," answered Lenny; "I don't understand what they are about, and this seems to tell one how the steam-engine is made, and has nice plates; and this is Robinson Crusoe, which Parson Dale once said he would give me--I'd rather buy it out of my own money." "Well, please yourself," quoth the Tinker; "you shall have the books for four bob, and you can pay me next month." "Four bobs--four shillings? it is a great sum," said Lenny, "but I will lay by, as you are kind enough to trust me; good evening, Mr. Sprott." "Stay a bit," said the Tinker; "I'll just throw you these two little tracks into the barging; they be only a shilling a dozen, so 'tis but tuppence--and ven you has read _those_, vy, you'll be a reglar customer." The Tinker tossed to Lenny Nos. 1 and 2 of Appeals to Operatives, and the peasant took them up gratefully. The young knowledge-seeker went his way across the green fields, and under the still autumn foliage of the hedgerows. He looked first at one book, then at another; he did not know on which to settle. The Tinker rose and made a fire with leaves and furze and sticks, some dry and some green. Lenny has now opened No. 1 of the tracts: they are the shortest to read, and don't require so much effort of the mind as the explanation of the steam-engine. The Tinker has now set on his grimy glue-pot, and the glue simmers. CHAPTER VI.