vise you, sir, to study
algebra, if you are not an adept already in it. Your head would get less
_muddy_, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbours about paper
and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting
with sin and sorrow.' It is perhaps needless to add that this visitor
came no more."

Mr. Johnson had, indeed, a real abhorrence of a person that had ever
before him treated a little thing like a great one; and he quoted this
scrupulous gentleman with his packthread very often, in ridicule of a
friend who, looking out on Streatham Common from our windows, one day,
lamented the enormous wickedness of the times because some bird-catchers
were busy there one fine Sunday morning. "While half the Christian world
is permitted," said he, "to dance and sing and celebrate Sunday as a day
of festivity, how comes your Puritanical spirit so offended with
frivolous and empty deviations from exactness? Whoever loads life with
unnecessary scruples, sir," continued he, "provokes the attention of
others on his conduct, and incurs the censure of singularity without
reaping the reward of superior virtue."

I must not, among the anecdotes of Dr. Johnson's life, omit to relate a
thing that happened to him one day, which he told me of himself. As he
was walking along the Strand a gentleman stepped out of some neighbouring
tavern, with his napkin in his hand, and no hat, and stopping him as
civily as he could, "I beg your pardon, sir, but you are Dr. Johnson, I
believe?" "Yes, sir." "We have a wager depending on your reply. Pray,
sir, is it irr_e_parable or irrep_air_able that one should say?" "The
_last_, I think, sir," answered Dr. Johnson, "for the adverb ought to
follow the verb; but you had better consult my 'Dictionary' than me, for
that was the result of more thought than you will now give me time for."
"No, no," replied the gentleman, gaily, "the book I have no certainty at
all of, but here is the _author_, to whom I referred. Is he not,
sir?"--to a friend with him. "I have won my twenty guineas quite fairly,
and am much obliged to you, sir;" and so shaking Mr. Johnson kindly by
the hand, he went back to finish his dinner or dessert.

Another strange thing he told me once which there was no danger of
forgetting; how a young gentleman called on him one morning, and told him
that his father having, just before his death, dropped suddenly into the
enjoyment of an ample fortune, he (the son)