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Many years ago there was a Grind. A party of Sports saw him approaching, deeply immersed in his book. “Look you,” quoth the chief of the Sports–“look you and observe him fall over me.”

And they looked.

Onward blindly trudged the Grind, reading as he came. The Sport stepped ahead of him, stooped, and —- one big foot of the Grind shot out and kicked him into the gutter. Then the Grind continued his walk and his reading without saying a word.

This incident is here recorded for the betterment of the Young, to show them that things are not always what they seem.

Samuel Johnson, I have said, was a Grind of the pure type. He was so nearsighted that he fell over chairs in drawing-rooms, and so awkward that his long arms occasionally brushed the bric-a-brac from mantels. No lady’s train was safe if he was in the room. At gatherings of young people, if Johnson appeared, his presence was at once the signal for mirth, of which he was, of course, the unconscious object.

Johnson’s face was scarred by the King’s Evil, which even the touch of Queen Anne had failed to cure. While a youth he talked aloud to himself–a privilege that should be granted only to those advanced in years. He would grunt out prayers and expletives at uncertain times, keep up a clucking sound with his tongue, sway his big body from side to side, and drum a tattoo upon his knee. Now and again would come a suppressed whistle, and then a low humming sound, backed up by a vacant non-compos-mentis smile.

Another odd whim of Johnson’s was, that he would never pass a lamp-post without touching it, and would go back miles upon his way to repair an omission. Surely great wit to madness is near allied.

This most strange young man was a boarder in the home of Mrs. Porter, when her husband was alive, and the husband and boarder had been fast friends–drawn together by a bookish bias.

Very naturally, when the husband passed away, the boarder sought to console the bereaved landlady, and the result was as usual. And when, long years after, Johnson would solemnly explain that it was a pure love-match on both sides, the statement never failed to excite much needless and ill-suppressed merriment on the part of the listeners. In mimicking the endearments of Johnson and his “pretty creature”–so the admiring husband called her–Garrick many years later added to his artistic reputation.

Unlike most literary men, Johnson was domestic, and his marriage was one of the most happy events of his career. But to show that the philosophy of Montaigne is not infallible, and that all signs fail in dry weather, it may be stated that the bride proved by her conduct on her wedding-day that she had some relish of the saltness of time in her cosmos, despite her fifty summers and as many hard winters.

Said Johnson to Boswell, referring to the horseback-ride home after the wedding-ceremony: “Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out of sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon come up with me. When she did I observed her to be in tears.”

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