t yet.' With an ambitious view to such a consummation, they
pinched and pared, rose early and lay down late, ate dry bread and drank
cold water, to secure to Abel the means of learning. Meantime, his tall,
ungainly figure, his taciturn and grave manners, and some grotesque
habits of swinging his limbs and screwing his visage while reciting his
task, made poor Sampson the ridicule of all his school-companions. The
same qualities secured him at Glasgow College a plentiful share of the
same sort of notice. Half the youthful mob of 'the yards' used to
assemble regularly to see Dominie Sampson (for he had already attained
that honourable title) descend the stairs from the Greek class, with his
lexicon under his arm, his long misshapen legs sprawling abroad, and
keeping awkward time to the play of his immense shoulder-blades, as they
raised and depressed the loose and threadbare black coat which was his
constant and only wear. When he spoke, the efforts of the professor
(professor of divinity though he was) were totally inadequate to restrain
the inextinguishable laughter of the students, and sometimes even to
repress his own. The long, sallow visage, the goggle eyes, the huge
under-jaw, which appeared not to open and shut by an act of volition, but
to be dropped and hoisted up again by some complicated machinery within
the inner man, the harsh and dissonant voice, and the screech-owl notes
to which it was exalted when he was exhorted to pronounce more
distinctly,--all added fresh subject for mirth to the torn cloak and
shattered shoe, which have afforded legitimate subjects of raillery
against the poor scholar from Juvenal's time downward. It was never known
that Sampson either exhibited irritability at this ill usage, or made the
least attempt to retort upon his tormentors. He slunk from college by the
most secret paths he could discover, and plunged himself into his
miserable lodging, where, for eighteenpence a week, he was allowed the
benefit of a straw mattress, and, if his landlady was in good humour,
permission to study his task by her fire. Under all these disadvantages,
he obtained a competent knowledge of Greek and Latin, and some
acquaintance with the sciences.

In progress of time, Abel Sampson, probationer of divinity, was admitted
to the privileges of a preacher. But, alas! partly from his own
bashfulness, partly owing to a strong and obvious disposition to
risibility which pervaded the congregation upon his firs