e-cornered hat during his visits; and
we have an amusing anecdote of his contest of courtesy with a patient
who persisted in endeavoring to relieve him of his hat, which only made
him press it more devoutly to his heart. He often had to pawn his
clothes to keep from starving. He sold his "Life of Voltaire" for
twenty dollars. After great hardship he managed to publish his "Polite
Learning in Europe," and this brought him to public notice. Next came
"The Traveller," and the wretched man in a Fleet Street garret found
himself famous. His landlady once arrested him for rent, but Dr.
Johnson came to his relief, took from his desk the manuscript of the
"Vicar of Wakefield," and sold it for three hundred dollars. He spent
two years revising "The Deserted Village" after it was first written.
Generous to a fault, vain and improvident, imposed on by others, he was
continually in debt; although for his "History of the Earth and
Animated Nature" he received four thousand dollars, and some of his
works, as, for instance, "She Stoops to Conquer," had a large sale.
But in spite of fortune's frown and his own weakness, he won success
and fame. The world, which so often comes too late with its assistance
and laurels, gave to the weak, gentle, loving author of "The Vicar of
Wakefield" a monument in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

The poor, scrofulous, and almost blind boy, Samuel Johnson, was taken
by his mother to receive the touch of Queen Anne, which was supposed to
heal the "King's Evil." He entered Oxford as a servant, copying
lectures from a student's notebooks, while the boys made sport of the
bare feet showing through great holes in his shoes. Some one left a
pair of new shoes at his door, but he was too proud to be helped, and
threw them out of the window. He was so poor that he was obliged to
leave college, and at twenty-six married a widow of forty-eight. He
started a private school with his wife's money; but, getting only three
pupils, was obliged to close it. He went to London, where he lived on
nine cents a day. In his distress he wrote a poem in which appeared in
capital letters the line, "Slow rises worth by poverty depressed,"
which attracted wide attention. He suffered greatly in London for
thirteen years, being arrested once for a debt of thirteen dollars. At
forty he published "The Vanity of Human Wishes," in which were these
lines:--

"Then mark what ills the scholar's life assail;
Toil