the poem."

"Sunday Morning (March 14).--William had slept badly. He got up at 9
o'clock, but before he rose he had finished the Beggar Boy."

The following is the "account" written in her Journal on Tuesday, May
23, 1800:

"A very tall woman, tall much beyond the measure of tall women, called
at the door. She had on a very long brown cloak, and a very white cap,
without bonnet. Her face was brown, but it had plainly once been fair.
She led a little barefooted child about two years old by the hand, and
said her husband, who was a tinker, was gone before with the other
children. I gave her a piece of bread. Afterwards, on my road to
Ambleside, beside the bridge at Rydal, I saw her husband sitting at
the roadside, his two asses standing beside him, and the two young
children at play upon the grass. The man did not beg. I passed on, and
about a quarter of a mile farther I saw two boys before me, one about
ten, the other about eight years old, at play, chasing a butterfly.
They were wild figures, not very ragged, but without shoes and
stockings. The hat of the elder was wreathed round with yellow
flowers; the younger, whose hat was only a rimless crown, had stuck it
round with laurel leaves. They continued at play till I drew very
near, and then they addressed me with the begging cant and the whining
voice of sorrow. I said, 'I served your mother this morning' (the boys
were so like the woman who had called at our door that I could not be
mistaken). 'O,' says the elder, 'you could not serve my mother, for
she's dead, and my father's in at the next town; he's a potter.' I
persisted in my assertion, and that I would give them nothing. Says
the elder, 'Come, let's away,' and away they flew like lightning. They
had, however, sauntered so long in their road that they did not reach
Ambleside before me, and I saw them go up to Mathew Harrison's house
with their wallet upon the elder's shoulder, and creeping with a
beggar's complaining foot. On my return through Ambleside I met, in
the street, the mother driving her asses, in the two panniers of one
of which were the two little children, whom she was chiding and
threatening with a wand with which she used to drive on her asses,
while the little things hung in wantonness over the pannier's edge.
The woman had told me in the morning that she was of Scotland, which
her accent fully proved, and that she had lived (I