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Well, my children, fifty years had passed away since young Sam Johnson had shown himself so hard-hearted towards his father. It was now market-day in the village of Uttoxeter.
He says: "To do away with the sin of this disobedience, I this day went in a post-chaise to Uttoxeter, and going into the market at the time of high business, uncovered my head and stood with it bare an hour before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of standers-by and the inclemency of the weather; a penance by which I trust I have propitiated Heaven for this only instance, I believe, of contumacy to my father."
I examined my pistols, ran the tuck up and down in its scabbard, leaped on Sultan, and asked for the Uttoxeter road. My Lord Ogilvie parted from me on the fairest terms, bringing me with his own hands a great stirrup-cup, or "dock-an-torus," as he called it. "Man," said he, "I'm right glad to be acquent wi' ye.
And when I awoke, the odour of a bygone century was in my nostrils a faint, elusive smell, of which I never had any conception before crossing the Atlantic." The whole chapter entitled "Lichfield and Uttoxeter" is a sort of graceful tribute to Samuel Johnson, who certainly has nowhere else been more tenderly spoken of. "Beyond all question I might have had a wiser friend than he.
Had he been so, he would have hastened away that very moment to Uttoxeter, and have fallen at his father’s feet, even in the midst of the crowded market-place. There he would have confessed his fault, and besought Mr. Johnson to go home, and leave the rest of the day’s work to him. But such was Sam’s pride and natural stubbornness, that he could not bring himself to this humiliation.
You must go to Uttoxeter in my stead, and tend the bookstall in the market-place there." This was spoken, above a hundred years ago, by an elderly man, who had once been a thriving bookseller at Lichfield, in England. Being now in reduced circumstances, he was forced to go, every market-day, and sell books at a stall, in the neighboring village of Uttoxeter. His son, to whom Mr.
It was all but pitch-dark, and the moon was not due to rise for more than an hour, but the sky was clear and the stars were out in masses for company and guidance. Ellerton Grange was near Uttoxeter, and Uttoxeter was a sizeable townlet just inside my own county, and some fifteen miles from Ashbourne. The road was the usual cross-road, all of it bad and most of it vile.
They took themselves and their vocation seriously, and produced an immense quantity of careful, conscientious work, the work of honest craftsmen rather than artists, with the quality of a finished piece of cabinet-making, or a strip of fine embroidery. Mary Howitt was the daughter of Samuel Botham, a land-surveyor at Uttoxeter.
A bas-relief on the pedestal shows Johnson doing penance in the market-place of Uttoxeter for an act of disobedience to his father, committed fifty years before. The next day I went to Uttoxeter on a sentimental pilgrimage to see the very spot where Johnson had stood. How strange it is that tradition should not have kept in mind the place!
She stopped abruptly, plainly caught out for the first time. A minute later I was off again. At the fork Sultan made for the left, and I had to pull him sharply to the right. The road got steadily worse, but Orion was clear in view ahead of me, dropping down behind Uttoxeter, and I pushed on. If a man is to turn back because of a bad road, he'll not travel far in the Shires.
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