he never felt, hindered her from feeling
what shocks you on repetition. I tell you, the woman is ugly and sickly
and foolish and poor; and would it not make a man hang himself to hear
such a creature say it was happy?

"The life of a sailor was also a continual scene of danger and exertion,"
he said; "and the manner in which time was spent shipboard would make all
who saw a cabin envy a gaol." The roughness of the language used on
board a man-of-war, where he passed a week on a visit to Captain Knight,
disgusted him terribly. He asked an officer what some place was called,
and received for answer, that it was where the loplolly man kept his
loplolly, a reply he considered, not unjustly, as disrespectful, gross,
and ignorant; for though in the course of these memoirs I have been led
to mention Dr. Johnson's tenderness towards _poor_ people, I do not wish
to mislead my readers, and make them think he had any delight in _mean_
manners or coarse expressions. Even dress itself, when it resembled that
of the vulgar, offended him exceedingly; and when he had condemned me
many times for not adorning my children with more show than I thought
useful or elegant, I presented a little girl to him who came o'visiting
one evening covered with shining ornaments, to see if he would approve of
the appearance she made. When they were gone home, "Well, sir," said I,
"how did you like little miss? I hope she was _fine_ enough." "It was
the finery of a beggar," said he, "and you know it was; she looked like a
native of Cow Lane dressed up to be carried to Bartholomew Fair."

His reprimand to another lady for crossing her little child's
handkerchief before, and by that operation dragging down its head oddly
and unintentionally, was on the same principle. "It is the beggar's fear
of cold," said he, "that prevails over such parents, and so they pull the
poor thing's head down, and give it the look of a baby that plays about
Westminster Bridge, while the mother sits shivering in a niche."

I commended a young lady for her beauty and pretty behaviour one day,
however, to whom I thought no objection could have been made. "I saw
her," says Dr. Johnson, "take a pair of scissors in her left hand,
though; and for all her father is now become a nobleman, and as you say,
excessively rich, I should, were I a youth of quality ten years hence,
hesitate between a girl so neglected, and a _negro_."

It was indeed astonishing how he _could_ remark