No, Sir; you have expressed the rational and just nature
of sympathy. I would have gone to the extremity of the earth to have
preserved this boy.'
He was soon quite calm. The letter was from Mr. Thrale's clerk, and
concluded, 'I need not say how much they wish to see you in London.' He
said, 'We shall hasten back from Taylor's.'
Mrs. Lucy Porter and some other ladies of the place talked a great
deal of him when he was out of the room, not only with veneration but
affection. It pleased me to find that he was so much BELOVED in his
native city.
Mrs. Aston, whom I had seen the preceding night, and her sister, Mrs.
Gastrel, a widow lady, had each a house and garden, and pleasure-ground,
prettily situated upon Stowhill, a gentle eminence, adjoining to
Lichfield. Johnson walked away to dinner there, leaving me by myself
without any apology; I wondered at this want of that facility of
manners, from which a man has no difficulty in carrying a friend to a
house where he is intimate; I felt it very unpleasant to be thus left in
solitude in a country town, where I was an entire stranger, and began to
think myself unkindly deserted; but I was soon relieved, and convinced
that my friend, instead of being deficient in delicacy, had conducted
the matter with perfect propriety, for I received the following note in
his handwriting: 'Mrs.
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