s taught
his letters betimes: But then, as it is here set forth with much
solemnity,

From his sixth year, the boy, of whom I speak,
In summer, tended cattle on the hills.

And again, a few pages after, that there may be no risk of mistake as to
a point of such essential importance--

From early childhood, even, as hath been said,
From his _sixth year_, he had been sent abroad,
_In summer_, to tend herds: Such was his task!

In the course of this occupation, it is next recorded, that he acquired
such a taste for rural scenery and open air, that when he was sent to
teach a school in a neighbouring village, he found it "a misery to him,"
and determined to embrace the more romantic occupation of a Pedlar--or,
as Mr. Wordsworth more musically expresses it,

A vagrant merchant bent beneath his load;

--and in the course of his peregrinations had acquired a very large
acquaintance, which, after he had given up dealing, he frequently took a
summer ramble to visit. The author, on coming up to this interesting
personage, finds him sitting with his eyes half shut;--and, not being
quite sure whether he's asleep or awake, stands "some minutes space" in
silence beside him. "At length," says he, with his own delightful
simplicity--

At length I hailed him--_seeing that his hat
Was moist_ with water-drops, as if the brim
Had newly scooped a running stream!--
--"'Tis," said I, "a burning day;
My lips are parched with thirst;--but you, I guess,
Have somewhere found relief."

Upon this, the benevolent old man points him out a well in a corner, to
which the author repairs; and, after minutely describing its situation,
beyond a broken wall, and between two alders that "grew in a cold damp
nook," he thus faithfully chronicles the process of his return--

My thirst I slaked--and from the cheerless spot
Withdrawing, straightway to the shade returned,
Where sate the old man on the cottage bench.

The Pedlar then gives an account of the last inhabitants of the deserted
cottage beside them. These were, a good industrious weaver and his wife
and children. They were very happy for a while; till sickness and want
of work came upon them; and then the father enlisted as a soldier, and
the wife pined in the lonely cottage--growing every year more careless
and desponding, as her anxiety and fears for her absent husband, of whom
no tidings ever reached her, accumulated. Her children died, and left
her ch