exercise in so short a time, I thought you would find it difficult to make them all as soon as you should.'
This Whitsuntide, I and my brother were sent to pass some time at Birmingham[1]; I believe, a fortnight. Why such boys were sent to trouble other houses, I cannot tell. My mother had some opinion that much improvement was to be had by changing the mode of life. My uncle Harrison was a widower; and his house was kept by Sally Ford, a young woman of such sweetness of temper, that I used to say she had no fault. We lived most at uncle Ford's, being much caressed by my aunt, a good-natured, coarse woman, easy of converse, but willing to find something to censure in the absent. My uncle Harrison did not much like us, nor did we like him. He was a very mean and vulgar man, drunk every night[2], but drunk with little drink, very peevish, very proud, very ostentatious, but, luckily, not rich. At my aunt Ford's I eat so much of a boiled leg of mutton, that she used to talk of it. My mother, who had lived in a narrow sphere, and was then affected by little things, told me seriously that it would hardly ever be forgotten. Her mind, I think, was afterwards much enlarged, or greater evils wore out the care of less.
I staid after the vacation was over some days; and remember, when I wrote home, that I desired the horses to come on Thursday of the first school week; and then, and not till then, they should be welcome to go. I was much pleased with a rattle to my whip, and wrote of it to my mother.
When my father came to fetch us home, he told the ostler, that he had twelve miles home[3], and two boys under his care. This offended me. He had then a watch, which he returned when he was to pay for it[4].
In making, I think, the first exercise under Holbrook, I perceived the power of continuity of attention, of application not suffered to wander or to pause. I was writing at the kitchen
- ↑ In 1700 the population of Birmingham was 15,032; in 1731,23,286. Gentleman's Magazine, 1743, p. 539.
- ↑ 'I remember (said Dr. Johnson) when all the decent people in Lichfield got drunk every night and were not thought the worse of.' Life, v. 59.
- ↑ Lichfield was sixteen miles from Birmingham.
- ↑ Johnson, Hawkins believed, did not have a watch till he was in his fifty-ninth year. Ib. ii. 57, n. 4.
