sons roused themselves lazily on the settle--my husband saw that
he stood fairly committed to the relation of the story, so he
told it without more ado.

I have often heard him relate that strange adventure (William is
the best teller of a story I ever met with) to friends of all
ranks in many different parts of England, and I never yet knew it
fail of producing an effect. The farmhouse audience were, I may
almost say, petrified by it. I never before saw people look so
long in the same direction, and sit so long in the same attitude,
as they did. Even the servants stole away from their work in the
kitchen, and, unrebuked by master or mistress, stood quite
spell-bound in the doorway to listen. Observing all this in
silence, while my husband was going on with his narrative, the
thought suddenly flashed across me, "Why should William not get a
wider audience for that story, as well as for others which he has
heard from time to time from his sitters, and which he has
hitherto only repeated in private among a few friends? People
tell stories in books and get money for them. What if we told our
stories in a book? and what if the book sold? Why freedom,
surely, from the one great anxiety that is now preying on us!
Money enough to stop at the farmhouse till William's eyes are fit
for work again!" I almost jumped up from my chair as my thought
went on shaping itself in this manner. When great men make
wonderful discoveries, do they feel sensations like mine, I
wonder? Was Sir Isaac Newton within an ace of skipping into the
air when he first found out the law of gravitation? Did Friar
Bacon long to dance when he lit the match and heard the first
charge of gunpowder in the world go off with a bang?