"An Irish laborer laid a wager with another hod bearer that the latter could not carry him up the ladder to the top of a house in his hod, without letting him fall. The bet is accepted, and up they go. There is peril at every step. At the top of the ladder there is life and the loss of the wager,--death and success below! The highest point is reached in safety; the wagerer looks humbled and disappointed. 'Well,' said he, 'you have won; there is no doubt of that; worse luck to you another time; but at the third story I HAD HOPES.'" * * * * * In a quaint old edition of "The Spectator," which seems to have been through many sieges, and must have come to grief very early in its existence, if one may judge anything from the various names which are scrawled upon it in different years, reaching back almost to the date of its publication, I find this note in the handwriting of Addison, sticking fast on the reverse side of his portrait. It is addressed to Ambrose Philips, and there is no doubt that he went where he was bidden, and found the illustrious Joseph all ready to receive him at a well-furnished table. "Tuesday Night. "Sir, "If you are at leisure for an hour, your company will be a great obligation to "Yr. most humble sev't. "J. Addison. "Fountain Tavern." That night at the "Fountain," perchance, they discussed that war of words which might then have been raging between the author of the "Pastorals" and Pope, moistening their clay with a frequency to which they were both somewhat notoriously inclined. My friend rides hard her hobby for choice editions, and she hunts with a will whenever a good old copy of a well-beloved author is up for pursuit. She is not a fop in binding, but she must have _appropriate_ dresses for her favorites. She knows what "Adds a precious seeing to the eye" as well as Hayday himself, and never lets her folios shiver when they ought to be warm. Moreover, she _reads_ her books, and, like the scholar in Chaucer, would rather have "At her beddès head A twenty bokes, clothed in black and red, Of Aristotle and his philosophy, Than robes rich, or fiddle, or psaltrie." I found her not long ago deep in a volume of "Mr. Welsted's Poems"; and as that author is not particularly lively or inviting to a modern reader, I begged to know why he was thus honored. "I was trying," said she, "to learn, if possible, why Dicky Steele should have made his daughter a birth-day gift of these poems. This copy I found on a stall in Fleet Street many years ago, and it has in Sir Richard's handwriting this inscription on one of the fly-leaves:-- "ELIZABETH STEELE Her Book Giv'n by Her Father RICHARD STEELE. March 20th, 1723.