With the old Friends, her parents, I cannot boast that I was even on speaking terms; but with the lovely and lively Rachel my acquaintance had ripened even to the calling her by her Christian name; and the reciprocation of her thou and thee, to which I was led, not as a convertite, but from learning, in my French and German Grammars, that the use of the second person singular was an especial token of intimacy and affection. In this our neighbourly intercourse, a system of mutual accommodation sprang up between us, not by bills, but by books; for which she drew upon me by pretty little notes of hand, that I duly honoured, making them payable over the back garden
[Pg 337]
 wall. Drawings and pieces of new music were equally negotiable. If I remember rightly, it was in return for Moore’s Melodies—the exchange at the time being against me—that I received “Fox’s Martyrs.” It was rather a ponderous tome for a lover of light reading; and if St. Swithin’s Festival had not fallen on a very wet Sunday in the country, I might never have opened its leaves,—if indeed they did not open of themselves,—thus letting fall certain MSS. intrusted to their custody, and which I now proceed to make public. In a new edition of the “Curiosities of Literature” they would deserve a distinguished place.
MINUTES OF THE TOTTENHAM FRIENDS’ CONVERSAZIONE;
ESTABLISHED with a view to sober, Intellectual, and Literary unbendings. Now first held, namely, on ............