I once lived near a literary cook. It was to him by a sort of natural heritage that fell the keeping of the Hawkins Bar Library, purchased by the “boys” way back in the <small>A.D.</small> eighteen hundred and fifties. The library occupied two sides of a very small cabin, and the man who kept it lived on or near the other two sides. There, during nights and rainy days, he read and ate. His table, a mere flap or shelf projecting from the wall, was two-thirds covered with books and papers, and the other third with a never-cleared-off array of table furniture, to wit: A tin plate, knife, fork, tin cup, yeast-powder can, pepper-box, ditto full of sugar, ditto full of salt, a butter-plate, a bottle of vinegar and another of molasses, and may be, on occasions, one of whiskey. On every book and paper were more or less of the imprint of greasy fingers, or streaks of molasses. The plate, owing to the almost entire absence of the cleansing process, was even imbedded in a brownish, unctuous deposit, the congealed oleaginous overflow of months of meals. There he devoured beef and lard, bacon and beans and encyclopedias, Humboldt’s “Cosmos” and dried apples, novels and physical nourishment at one and the same time. He went long since where the weary cease from troubling, and the wicked, let us hope, are at rest. Years ago, passing through the deserted Bar, I peeped in at Morgan’s cabin. A young oak almost barred the door, part of the roof was gone, the books and shelves had vanished; naught remained but the old miner’s stove and a few battered cooking utensils. I had some thought at the time of camping for the night on the Bar, but this desolate cabin and its associations of former days contrasted with the loneliness and solitude of the present proved too much for me. I feared the possible ghost of the dead librarian, and left for a populated camp. Poor fellow! While living, dyspepsia and he were in close embrace. A long course of combined reading and eating ruined his digestion. One thing at a time; what a man does he wants to do with all his might.