The doll I have in my lap I bought at the fair, and have named her Princess Carnival. She is a magnificent creature, and I admire and suspect her; but as for loving her—there is no doll in the world to compare with you, my Clytie, when it comes to loving. You are not as handsome as Princess Carnival, but I love you a million times more, my pet, than I can ever love her, beautiful as she is.
And now good-night. Be as happy as you can, and take good care of the others, till I come back to you all.
THE MAGIC LANTERN.—Drawn by S. G. McCutcheon.
[DR. JOHNSON DOING PENANCE.]
The picture on the next page represents one of the most remarkable incidents in the life of Dr. Samuel Johnson. This famous man prided himself upon being odd and different from other men, and in doing queer things that no one else would have thought of doing; and the picture shows him in the act of carrying out one of the queer ideas for which he was noted.
Dr. Johnson's father was a bookseller in a small way, and was in the habit of setting up stalls or booths for the sale of books in the market-places of towns in the neighborhood of Lichfield, where he lived, on market-days. Sometimes he took his son Samuel with him as an assistant. This son Samuel, who afterward became Dr. Johnson, said, in speaking of the incident to which the picture refers, that as a general thing he could not accuse himself of having been a disobedient child. "Once, indeed," said he, "I was disobedient: I refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter market. Pride was the source of that refusal, and the remembrance of it was painful. A few years ago I desired to atone for this fault. I went to Uttoxeter in very bad weather, and stood for a considerable time, bare-headed, in the rain, on the spot where my father's stall used to stand."
So here the wise Doctor is, standing bare-headed in the open market-place, exposed to drenching rain, and to the jeers of the people. And all this, when he is more than seventy years of age, for the purpose of trying to atone for one act of disobedience committed in his boyhood!