job, thinking to scare me out, but that was what I 

 wanted" — and he smiled modestly and showed a set 

 of incisors as fine and strong as dog teeth. " I want to 

 remain with you a week and pay for my board in 

 work," he cautiously continued. 



" But about your father — Mr. Wallace — do I know 

 him?" 



" I think so — he has written you several letters — Alfred 

 Russel Wallace ! " 



You could have knocked me down with a ladyslipper. 

 QI opened the letter and unmistakably it was from the 

 great scientist, " introducing my baby boy." 

 I never met Alfred Russel "Wallace, and I know if I 

 should, I would find him very gentle, kindly and sim- 

 ple in all his ways — as really great men ever are. 

 He would not talk to me in Latin nor throw off tech- 

 nical phrases about great nothings, and I would feel 

 just as much at home with him as I did with Ol' John 

 Burroughs the last time I saw him, leaning up against 

 a country railway station in shirt-sleeves, chewing a 

 straw, exchanging salutes with the engineer on a West 

 Shore jerkwater. " S' long, John ! " called the going one 

 as he leaned out of the cab window. 

 "S' long, Bill, and good luck to you," was the cheery 

 answer Ji Js> 



But still all of us have moments when we think of the 

 world's most famous ones as being surely eight feet 

 tall, and having voices like fog-horns. 

 " I can do most any kind of hard work, you know" — 

 I was aroused from my little mental excursion, and 



93 



LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



