was never known that Sampson either exhibited irritability at this
ill usage, or made the least attempt to retort upon his
tormentors. He slunk from college by the most secret paths he
could discover, and plunged himself into his miserable lodging,
where, for eighteenpence a week, he was allowed the benefit of a
straw mattress, and, if his landlady was in good humour,
permission to study his task by her fire. Under all these
disadvantages, he obtained a competent knowledge of Greek and
Latin, and some acquaintance with the sciences.

In progress of time, Abel Sampson, probationer of divinity, was
admitted to the privileges of a preacher. But, alas! partly from
his own bashfulness, partly owing to a strong and obvious
disposition to risibility which pervaded the congregation upon his
first attempt, he became totally incapable of proceeding in his
intended discourse, gasped, grinned, hideously rolled his eyes
till the congregation thought them flying out of his head, shut
the Bible, stumbled down the pulpit-stairs, trampling upon the old
women who generally take their station there, and was ever after
designated as a 'stickit minister.' And thus he wandered back to
his own country, with blighted hopes and prospects, to share the
poverty of his parents. As he had neither friend nor confidant,
hardly even an acquaintance, no one had the means of observing
closely how Dominie Sampson bore a disappointment which supplied
the whole town with a week's sport. It would be endless even to
mention the numerous jokes to which it gave birth, from a ballad
called 'Sampson's Riddle,' written upon the subject by a smart
young student of humanity, to the sly hope of the Principal that
the fugitive had not, in imitation of his mighty namesake, taken
the college gates along with him in his retreat.