MORDECAI CUBITT COOKE 59 
business did not attract so but at this time he learnt to play 
instruments, on most of which he became more or less 
proficient. At the age of swanky Cooke left Norfolk and returned 
to London to live with a second uncle, William Cubitt, a keen 
Baptist minister and a manuacturer of velvet and coach t trim- 
mings ; he found occupation as a copying clerk in a solicitor’s 
office, but in 1847 had a serious illness and lost his situation. 
About this time he turned his attention to literature: we find 
him publishing, at 44d. each, verses with such titles as “ The 
Struggle for Freedom,” “ Flight of Thought,” ‘ Course of Love, 
&e. He later became an usher in a school at Birmingham, and 
also lectured on poets and poetry. ? 
About this time came Cooke’s introduction to fungi. “It 
was my good fortune to be introduced to an East Anglian gentle- 
man who resided in a small agricultural village not ten miles from 
Norwich. I had been invited to give a gossiping lecture to the 
ake 
with the squire. It soon became manifest that the hobby of 
y host was ‘edible angi,’ a subject of which I was then 
prototindty ignorant, but "I became pat —— - the 
