If it be true that the mountains in labour produce a ridiculous mouse, it is equally true that out of the smallest of molehills there are sometimes born colossal elephants. Some time in 1848 there appeared one day as a new boy a tall, handsome slip of a lad, very good-natured, very raw, fresh caught from Australia, as green as young wheat—George Salting. He was a good deal chaffed, never teased or bullied, he was too good for that. The spirit of the collector was born in him, and the foundation of the treasures which he amassed was laid in the purchase of half a walnut-shell. It happened in this wise. We lower boys used to delight at the proper season of the year in fighting one shell against another. The conquering shell had the right to lay to its account not only the beaten enemy but also all the other shells which that particular enemy had defeated. One day there appeared at “the wall” in Long Walk a famous “cad” of those days, who produced a half-shell which had gained a thousand victories. Salting, always plentifully provided with money, gave five shillings for it. Alas! the champion was shortly afterwards dethroned by a vulgar novice which had come into its owner’s possession in the ordinary course of eating. Goliath was not a greater disappointment to the Philistine army. But, never mind! out of that wonderful walnut-shell came in due course all the gems with which the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum have been enriched. Stand before Holbein’s miniature of Anne of Cleves, Henry the Eighth’s “great Flanders mare,” and think of that. From the walnut-shell, to borrow the famous word of Maréchal Macmahon, he continued,[23] and if in his early days as a collector he was often a prey to unscrupulous dealers, he ended by gaining experience and became a good judge. Many were the practical jokes of which, as a boy, he was the good-humoured victim. One fine September evening—it must have been in 1850 or 1851; we had just come back from the summer holidays—a knot of younger boys were gathered together at the end of Keate’s Lane, and there was a grand recital of all the great events that had happened in the halcyon days. One boy had killed a salmon, another had been out cub-hunting, a third had been out partridge-shooting with his father on the 1st. Salting announced that he too had been out shooting on the 1st. He was asked what he had shot. “I shot a yellowhammer,” was the answer.