The Leavenworth Echo

His Vivid Imagination Once Nearly Got Coleridge In Trouble.

From his early youth Coleridge lived in a world of books and dreams, yet his favorite walk seems to have been the Strand, the last place in the world for a poet to lose himself in reverie. As he strolled down the street he imagined himself swimming the Hellespont, the feat of which other poets had written and which the poet Byron was to accomplish later. Once while the mind of Coleridge was thus far from the busy Strand he absently thrust his hands before him in the manner of one swimming. Suddenly one hand came in contact with a gentleman's pocket.

The gentleman, thinking to capture a thief, seized the hand and exclaimed: "Ah! So young and so wicked!" He accused the poor, poetic boy of an attempt at pocket picking.

With some fright and a few tears the boy explained, and we can imagine that words did not fail him who was to become the most brilliant talker of his age. The gentleman was delighted with Coleridge's imagination, which could turn the Strand into the Hellespont. The intelligence of the young Leander made the stranger inquire into Coleridge's tastes, and when he found the boy liked books he opened for him a subscription at the circulating library in Cheapside.-Westminster Gazette.