Of the few stories Percival told me, here is one.  In one of our country-places, a plain, shrewd townsman fell into chance conversation with him, and entertained him with some account of a neighbor who had been seized with a mania for high Art, and had let loose his frenzy upon canvas in a deluge of oil-colors.  If I mistake not, Percival was invited to inspect these productions of untaught and perhaps unteachable genius.  They were vast attempts at historical scenes, in which the heads and legs of heroes were visible, but played a very secondary part in the interest, compared with a perfect tempest of drapery, which rolled in ungovernable masses, like the clouds of a thunder-storm.

“What do you think of them?” inquired Percival.

“Well, I don’t claim to be a judge of such things,” replied his cicerone; “but the fact is, (and I told the painter so,) that, when I look at ’em, about the only thing I can think of is a resurrection of old clothes.”

In the town of Lebanon, an incident occurred which affected us rather more seriously.  Turning a corner suddenly, we came upon an old man digging up cobble-stones by the road-side and breaking them in pieces with an axe.  “A brother-geologist,” was our first impression.  At that moment the old man sprang toward us, the axe in one hand and half a brick in the other, shouting eagerly,—­

“I guess Mr. ——­” (name indistinguishable) “will be glad to see you, gentlemen.”

“For what?”

“Why, he has got several boxes of jewels; and I gave an advertisement in the paper.”

“Whose are they?”

“King Jerome’s.”

“And who is he?”

“The king of the world!” shouted the maniac, still advancing with a menacing air, and so near the wagon by this time that he might almost have hit Percival with his axe.

Without pausing to hear more about the jewels, a sudden blow to the horse barely enabled us to escape the reach of our fellow-laborer before he had time to use his axe on our own formations.

In the following year, when Percival was pursuing the survey by himself, on horseback, some of the elements of this adventure were repeated, but reversed after a very odd fashion.  The late Dr. Carrington, of Farmington, who told me the tale, being ten miles from home on a professional excursion, drove up to a tavern and found himself welcomed with extraordinary emphasis by the innkeeper.  The Doctor was just the person he wanted to see; the Doctor’s opinion was very much needed about that strange man out there; he wished the Doctor to have a talk with him, and see whether he was crazy or not.  The fellow had been there a day or two, picking up stones about the lots; and some of the boys had been sent to watch him, but could get nothing out of him.  This morning he wanted to go away, and ordered his horse; but the neighbors wouldn’t let it be brought up, for they said he was surely some mad chap who had taken another