,
there is a family of the Lizards in the Guardian."

_S----._ "A real family?"

_Mr. ----._ "No, my dear: a name given to supposed characters."

_M----._ "Wasn't it one of the young Lizards who would prove to his
mother, when she had just scalded her fingers with boiling water out
of the tea-kittle, that there's no more heat in fire that heats you,
than pain in the stick that beats you!"

_Mr. ----._ "Yes; I think that character has done harm; it has thrown
a ridicule upon metaphysical disquisitions."

_Mrs.----._ "Are not those lines about the pain in the stick in the
'Letter[116] to my Sisters at Crux Easton,' in Dodsley's poems?"

_Mr. ----._ "Yes; but they come originally from Hudibras, you know."

In slight conversations, such as these, which are not contrived for
the purpose, the curiosity of children is awakened to literature; they
see the use which people make of what they read, and they learn to
talk freely about what they meet with in books. What a variety of
thoughts came in a few instants from S----'s question about _Idem_!

(November 8th, 1795.) Mr. ---- read the first chapter of Hugh Trevor
to us; which contains the history of a passionate farmer, who was in a
rage with a goose because it would not eat some oats which he offered
it. He tore off the wings of the animal, and twisted off its neck; he
bit off the ear of a pig, because it squealed when he was ringing it;
he ran at his apprentice Hugh Trevor with a pitch-fork, because he
suspected that he had drank some milk; the pitch-fork stuck in a door.
Hugh Trevor then told the passionate farmer, that the dog Jowler had
drank the milk, but that he would not tell this before, because he
knew his master would have hanged the dog.

_S----_ admired Hugh Trevor for this extremely.

The farmer in his lucid intervals is extremely penitent, but his fit
of rage seizes him again one morning when he sees some milk boiling
over. He flies at Hugh Trevor, and stabs him with a clasp knife, with
which he had been cutting bread and cheese; the knife is stopped by
half a crown which Hugh Trevor had sewed in his waistcoat; _this half
crown he had found on the highway a few days before_.

It was doubted by Miss M. S----, whether this last was a proper
circumstance to be told to children, because it might lead them to be
dishonest.

The evening after Mr. ---- had read the story, he asked S---- to
repeat it to him. S---- remembered it, and told it distinctly till