(Grandpapa Loquitur.) You Don't Know Froissart Now, Young Folks. This Age, I Think, Prefers Recitals Of High-Spiced Crime, With "Slang" For Jokes, And Startling Titles; But, In My Time, When Still Some Few Loved "Old Montaigne," And Praised Pope'S Homer (Nay, Thought To Style Him "Poet" Too, Were Scarce Misnomer), Sir John Was Less Ignored. Indeed, I Can Re-Call How Some-One Present (Who Spoils Her Grandson, Frank!) Would Read And Find Him Pleasant; For,--By This Copy,--Hangs A Tale. Long Since, In An Old House In Surrey, Where Men Knew More Of "Morning Ale" Than "Lindley Murray," In A Dim-Lighted, Whip-Hung Hall, 'Neath Hogarth'S "Midnight Conversation," It Stood; And Oft 'Twixt Spring And Fall, With Fond Elation, I Turned The Brown Old Leaves. For There All Through One Hopeful Happy Summer, At Such A Page (I Well Knew Where), Some Secret Comer, Whom I Can Picture, 'Trix, Like You (Though Scarcely Such A Colt Unbroken), Would Sometimes Place For Private View A Certain Token;-- A Rose-Leaf Meaning "Garden Wall," An Ivy-Leaf For "Orchard Corner," A Thorn To Say "Don't Come At All,"-- Unwelcome Warner!-- Not That, In Truth, Our Friends Gainsaid; But Then Romance Required Dissembling, (Ann Radcliffe Taught Us That!) Which Bred Some Genuine Trembling; Though, As A Rule, All Used To End In Such Kind Confidential Parley As May To You Kind Fortune Send, You Long-Legged Charlie, When Your Time Comes. How Years Slip On! We Had Our Crosses Like Our Betters; Fate Sometimes Looked Askance Upon Those Floral Letters; And Once, For Three Long Days Disdained, The Dust Upon The Folio Settled; For Some-One, In The Right, Was Pained, And Some-One Nettled, That Sure Was In The Wrong, But Spake Of Fixed Intent And Purpose Stony To Serve King George, Enlist And Make Minced-Meat Of "Boney," Who Yet Survived--Ten Years At Least. And So, When She I Mean Came Hither, One Day That Need For Letters Ceased, She Brought This With Her! Here Is The Leaf-Stained Chapter:--How The English King Laid Siege To Calais; I Think Gran. Knows It Even Now,-- Go Ask Her, Alice.