said. 'How old are you, child?' 'Eighteen, father, I said. 'Eighteen
_years_?' he asked. 'Yes, father,' I said with some pique. 'Did you
suppose I meant eighteen months?' 'Only eighteen years,' he muttered,
'a mere baby, in short; and yet he has hit upon what we
Shakespearians have been boggling over for many year?--the symbolical
meaning involved in Hamlet's name. Henry, I prophesy great things for
you.'

An intimacy was cemented between us at once. One of the results of
this conversation was my father's elaborate paper, read before one of
his societies, in which he maintained that Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ was
a metaphysical poem, the great central idea of which was involved in
the name Hamlet, Amleth, or Hamalet--the idea that the universe,
suspended in the wide region of Nowhere, lies, an amulet, upon the
breast of the Great Latona,--a paper that was the basis of his
reputation in 'the higher criticism.'

Shortly after this my father and I spent the autumn in various parts
of Switzerland. One night, when we were sitting outside the chalet in
the full light of the moon, I was the witness of a display of passion
on the part of one whom I had always considered to be a dreamy
book-worm--a passionless, eccentric mystic--that simply amazed me. A
flickering tongue from the central fires suddenly breaking up through
the soil of an English vegetable garden could hardly have been a more
unexpected phenomenon to me than what occurred on that memorable
night.

The incident I am going to relate showed me how rash it is to suppose
that you have really fathomed the personality of any human creature.
The mementos of his first wife, which accompanied him whithersoever