THE COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE OF JOHN THORNTON, CLERK, AND THE BIRTH OF
SOME ONE WHO TAKES RATHER A CONSPICUOUS PART IN OUR STORY.


Sometime between the years 1780 and 1790, young John Thornton, then a
Servitor at Christ Church, fell in love with pretty Jane Hickman, whose
father was a well-to-do farmer, living not far down the river from
Oxford; and shortly before he took his degree, he called formally upon
old Hickman, and asked his daughter's hand. Hickman was secretly well
pleased that his daughter should marry a scholar and a gentleman like
John Thornton, and a man too who could knock over his bird, or kill his
trout in the lasher with any one. So after some decent hesitation he
told him, that as soon as he got a living, good enough to support Jane
as she had been accustomed to live, he might take her home with a
father's blessing, and a hundred pounds to buy furniture. And you may
take my word for it, that there was not much difficulty with the young
lady, for in fact the thing had long ago been arranged between them,
and she was anxiously waiting in the passage to hear her father's
decision, all the time that John was closeted with him.

John came forth from the room well pleased and happy. And that evening
when they two were walking together in the twilight by the quiet river,
gathering cowslips and fritillaries, he told her of his good prospects,
and how a young lord, who made much of him, and treated him as a friend
and an equal, though he was but a Servitor--and was used to sit in
his room talking with him long after the quadrangle was quiet, and the
fast men had reeled off to their drunken slumbers--had only three days