So closed this great little life. The greatest soldier who ever lived, as men talk about soldiers, but an utter failure in the sight of him who said: "He that ruleth his own spirit, is greater than he that taketh a city."
CHAPTER II.
ADDISON, JOSEPH.
When I was a little girl, I sat listening one day while several gentlemen who were visiting my father, talked together, and one of them told a queer story which interested me very much, and called forth bursts of laughter from the gentlemen. Then, one said, "That is almost equal to Addison's time."
Over this sentence I puzzled. The only person whom I knew by that name was an old lame man who lived at the lower end of a long straggling street, and who was not remarkable for anything but laziness. What could the gentlemen who were visiting my father know about him, and what did they mean by "Addison's time?" I hovered around my father for quite a while, looking for a chance to ask questions, but there was no break in the conversation, so I gave it up. Something recalled the matter to
me during the afternoon, and I asked a boy who lived near us, and with whom I was on quite friendly terms, if old Joe Addison had a clock that was queer; explaining to him at the same time why I wanted to know. He replied that he had seen a very large and very ugly-looking watch hanging in the shoe shop by old Joe's bench, and that Joe called it his turnip, and could take the outside casing all off, just as one could take a thing out of a box. This then was the explanation, I thought, but though we talked it over very thoroughly, we failed to see any connection between the story that the gentlemen had laughed over, and old Joe Addison's watch.
Something else came up to interest us, and we forgot all about it. And it was more than a year afterwards that I learned that my father's friends did not refer to old Joe at all, but to another Joseph Addison who was quite a different character.
I want you all to become acquainted with the real Joseph Addison; enough to know what it means when you hear him mentioned.
So, if you please, set down his name in your alphabetical dictionary: Joseph Addison.