who takes in dressmaking
for the neighbouring maid-servants, and has a small establishment of
lollipops, theatrical characters, and ginger-beer for the boys in Little
Craggs Buildings, hard by the Running Footman public-house, where father
and other gentlemen's gentlemen have their club: this good soul also
sells Sunday newspapers to the footmen of the neighbouring gentry; and
besides, has a stock of novels for the ladies of the upper servants'
table. Next to Miss Cann, Miss Flinders is John James's greatest friend
and benefactor. She has remarked him when he was quite a little man, and
used to bring his father's beer of a Sunday. Out of her novels he has
taught himself to read, dull boy at the day-school though he was, and
always the last in his class, there. Hours, happy hours, has he spent
cowering behind her counter, or hugging her books under his pinafore
when he had leave to carry them home. The whole library has passed
through his hands, his long, lean, tremulous hands, and under his eager
eyes. He has made illustrations to every one of those books, and been
frightened at his own pictures of Manfroni or the One-handed Monk,
Abellino the Terrific Bravo of Venice, and Rinaldo Rinaldini Captain
of Robbers. How he has blistered Thaddeus of Warsaw with his tears, and
drawn him in his Polish cap, and tights, and Hessians! William Wallace,
the Hero of Scotland, how nobly he has depicted him! With what whiskers
and bushy ostrich plumes!--in a tight kilt, and with what magnificent
calves to his legs, laying about him with his battle-axe, and bestriding
the bodies of King Edward's prostrate cavaliers! At this time Mr.
Honeyman comes to lodge in Walpole Street, and brings a set of Scott's
novels, for which he subscribed when at Oxford; and young John James,
who at first waits upon him and does little odd jobs for the reverend
gentleman, lights upon the volumes, and reads them with such a delight
and passion of pleasure as all the delights of future days will scarce
equal. A fool, is he?--an idle feller, out of whom no good will ever
come, as his father says. There was a time when, in despair of any
better chance for him, his parents thought of apprenticing him to a
tailor, and John James was waked up from a dream of Rebecca and informed
of the cruelty meditated against him. I forbear to describe the tears
and terror, and frantic desperation in which the poor boy was plunged.
Little Miss Cann rescued him from that awful board