er, who retained, however, a prodigious
influence over his most violent passions.

On the birthday of our eldest daughter, and that of our friend Dr.
Johnson, the 17th and the 18th of September, we every year made up a
little dance and supper, to divert our servants and their friends,
putting the summer-house into their hands for the two evenings, to fill
with acquaintance and merriment. Francis and his white wife were
invited, of course. She was eminently pretty, and he was jealous, as my
maids told me. On the first of these days' amusements (I know not what
year) Frank took offence at some attentions paid his Desdemona, and
walked away next morning to London in wrath. His master and I driving
the same road an hour after, overtook him. "What is the matter, child,"
says Dr. Johnson, "that you leave Streatham to-day. _Art sick_?" "He is
jealous," whispered I. "Are you jealous of your wife, you stupid
blockhead?" cries out his master in another tone. The fellow hesitated,
and, "_To be sure_, _sir_, _I don't quite approve_, _sir_," was the
stammering reply. "Why, what do they _do_ to her, man? Do the footmen
kiss her?" "No, sir, no! Kiss my _wife_, sir! _I hope not_, sir."
"Why, what _do_ they do to her, my lad?" "Why, nothing, sir, I'm sure,
sir." "Why, then go back directly and dance, you dog, do; and let's hear
no more of such empty lamentations." I believe, however, that Francis
was scarcely as much the object of Mr. Johnson's personal kindness as the
representative of Dr. Bathurst, for whose sake he would have loved
anybody or anything.

When he spoke of negroes, he always appeared to think them of a race
naturally inferior, and made few exceptions in favour of his own; yet
whenever disputes arose in his household among the many odd inhabitants
of which it consisted, he always sided with Francis against the others,
whom he suspected (not unjustly, I believe) of greater malignity. It
seems at once vexatious and comical to reflect that the dissensions those
people chose to live constantly in distressed and mortified him
exceedingly. He really was oftentimes afraid of going home, because he
was so sure to be met at the door with numberless complaints; and he used
to lament pathetically to me, and to Mr. Sastres, the Italian master, who
was much his favourite, that they made his life miserable from the
impossibility he found of making theirs happy, when every favour he
bestowed on one was wormwood to t