choose
to have card tables, she should have a profusion of the best sweetmeats,
and she would be sure to have company enough come to her.'

On Sunday, April 15, being Easter-day, after solemn worship in St.
Paul's church, I found him alone; Dr. Scott of the Commons came in.

We talked of the difference between the mode of education at Oxford,
and that in those Colleges where instruction is chiefly conveyed by
lectures. JOHNSON. 'Lectures were once useful; but now, when all can
read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary. If your
attention fails, and you miss a part of a lecture, it is lost; you
cannot go back as you do upon a book.' Dr. Scott agreed with him. 'But
yet (said I), Dr. Scott, you yourself gave lectures at Oxford.' He
smiled. 'You laughed (then said I,) at those who came to you.'

Dr. Scott left us, and soon afterwards we went to dinner. Our company
consisted of Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Desmoulins, Mr. Levett, Mr. Allen,
the printer, and Mrs. Hall, sister of the Reverend Mr. John Wesley,
and resembling him, as I thought, both in figure and manner. Johnson
produced now, for the first time, some handsome silver salvers, which he
told me he had bought fourteen years ago; so it was a great day. I was
not a little amused by observing Allen perpetually struggling to talk in
the manner of Johnson, like the little frog in the fable blowing himself
up to resemble the stately ox.

He mentioned a thing as not unfrequent, of which I had never heard
before,--being CALLED, that is, hearing one's name pronounced by the
voice of a known person at a great distance, far beyond the possibility
of being reached by any sound uttered by human organs. 'An acquaintance,
on whose veracity I can depend, told me, that walking home one evening
to Kilmarnock, he heard himself called from a wood, by the voice of a
brother who had gone to America; and the next packet brought accounts of
that brother's death.' Macbean asserted that this inexplicable CALLING
was a thing very well known. Dr. Johnson said, that one day at Oxford,
as he was turning the key of his chamber, he heard his mother
distinctly call SAM. She was then at Lichfleld; but nothing ensued.
This phaenomenon is, I think, as wonderful as any other mysterious fact,
which many people are very slow to believe, or rather, indeed, reject
with an obstinate contempt.

Some time after this, upon his making a remark which escaped my
attention, Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Hall