Gulliver18780527_002

2.

classical environment is laid always to do.
As I have said, Mr Jonson was a man of real
dignity. If any one wishes to realise this, let him attempt
to enter the school room door of the Brick Academy, in
opposition to a squaking pully & a ponderous might,
& turn^{ing the}sharp corner climb into the contracted wooden
box at the right,, and add this embarrassment a
heavy cane & a lame foot and a mountain of wrappings.
But Mr Johnson did all this, andnot one
of the fun-loving boys who crowded the room saw
anything to laugh at. On the contrary no sooner
was that wooden foot heard in the entry than we
were all hushed. Every eye was fixed upon him
in respecct as he entered Levi Wilder at the upper
end of the room stopped tuning his violin. We
rose in silence, while Mr Johnson pronounced
a brief invocation, uniformly asking that our
morning devotions might be performed "as being
Him who is invisible." Then followed a few verses
of scripture, so read that a hidden radiance
was made to flash out from its depths, as when
a stillful lapiday, holds before you a gem, so
adjusted that all its inner light beams upon your
surprised vision. Then came the hymn; and was there
ever such reading of a hymn? With feebler voice,
but with distant articulation, and melodious