CHAP. vii. RECEIVES A DEPUTATION. 71 



dress cost little. His best clothes were many years old. 

 His long swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons was 

 considered antediluvian. His tall chimney-pot hat was 

 entirely out of date. Sometimes he was jeered at as 

 he passed along. 



The boys knew that he had a love of nature. This 

 is the first taste that a country boy develops. Some- 

 times they were a little frightened at him. They viewed 

 him with awe, if not apprehension, when they encountered 

 him among the rocks with his hammer and chisel, or 

 came upon him as he emerged from a ditch, or from 

 behind a turf wall, in his pursuit of insects, or grasses, 

 or mosses. But their fear was always tempered by the 

 knowledge that any curiosity they alighted on, in the 

 shape of a stone, or a butterfly, or a beetle, would always 

 be repaid by the mysterious man when brought to him, 

 by a roll, or a cookie, or a biscuit, or sometimes by a 

 sixpence. 



One boy now a well-known minister called upon 

 Dick when about twelve years old. He was sent, with 

 another boy, as a deputation from a number of their 

 schoolfellows, to ascertain something about the bones of 

 a cuttle-fish which they had found upon the shore. The 

 boys went into his shop with considerable fear; but 

 they found the baker in excellent humour. He brought 

 down from his library several books, which he spread 

 out among the loaves of bread on his counter, and 

 pointed out to them specimens of other cuttle-fish bones 

 that had been found. "We were much astonished," 

 says the minister, " to be told that if we came back when 



