rescue of his heroines, and anon communing with
such glorious company as Addison and Lamb and Hazlitt. Had he not read
and re-read, and remembered every chapter of that classic work of which
his father had sold as many as seven copies in six months to the
Hamptonians--"Famous Boyhoods," by Uncle Jim? Within the gold-encrusted
covers of that enchanting book had he not learned how Charles Dickens
used to paste labels on jam-pots before he found fame and fortune in a
bottle of ink? Was not he aware that Robert Burns had been a ploughman,
and were not ploughmen in Hampton Bagot as common as hay-ricks and as
poor as mice? Had not Oliver Goldsmith been hard put to it often to find
a dinner, while Henry Charles had never lacked a meal? And had not Dr.
Johnson, who received a ludicrously large sum of money for making a
dictionary, lived in a garret? Emphatically, Henry Charles had reason to
look the future in the face clear-eyed, and to bless Uncle Jim for
giving him those inspiring facts. Moreover, a famous author had said:
"In the lexicon of youth there is no such word as fail." Had not Henry
copied these lines in atrocious handwriting till they swam before his
eyes, and had not his schoolmaster assured him his penmanship was the
worst he had ever witnessed, and were not all great authors wretched
penmen? True, he still had doubts as to what "the lexicon of youth"
might be.

Unlike his father, Henry was not a talkative person, and, indeed, it was
one of the black marks against him in popular opinion that he did not
make himself as sociable as he might have done with the lads of Hampton.
But weighted with such news, the need to noise it abroad was pressing,
and as soon as he could slip away from the supper-table he was
publishing the intelligence wherever a chance opening could be found.

In five minutes it had the village by the ears, and the inefficient
Miffin, ironing a coat at the moment it reached him, paused in his
operation to deliver himself of a sceptical sniff and some adverse
opinions on puffed-up fools who were eternally talking of book-larnin'
and things quite above them, instead of attending to their business.

"In moi opinion," and he stated it with engaging frankness, "Edward John
would do a sight better to let his long-legged lout stick at 'ome and
sell nibs and sealin'-wex and postage-stemps, like his fifteen-stone
father."

But really, Miffin's opinion did not count for much, although on this
occasion i