me from spoiling them: I was so impatient to set them at work that I
could not wait till their clothes were dry; and I was every half hour
rubbing my fingers upon their cheeks, to try whether the red paint was
yet hard enough.

"With some pride, I announced my intended exhibition to Mr. Y----; and
he appointed that evening for seeing it, saying that none but his own
boys should be present at the first representation. It was for them
alone it was originally designed; but I was so charmed with my
newly-finished work, that I would gladly have had all Exeter present at
the exhibition. However, before night, I was convinced of my friend Mr.
Y----'s superior prudence: the whole thing, as the carpenter said,
_went off_ pretty well; but several disasters happened which I had not
foreseen. There was one stiff old fellow, whose arms, twitch them which
way I would, I could never get to bend: and an obstinate old woman, who
would never do any thing else but curtsy, when I wanted her to kneel
down and to do her work. My children sorted their heaps of rubbish and
ore very dexterously; excepting one unlucky little chap, who, from the
beginning, had his head, somehow or other, turned the wrong way upon
his shoulders; and I could never manage, all the night, to set it right
again: it was in vain I flattered myself that his wry neck would escape
observation; for, as he was one of the wheelbarrow boys, he was a
conspicuous figure in the piece; and, whenever he appeared, wheeling
or emptying his barrow, I to my mortification heard repeated peals of
laughter from the spectators, in which even my patron, notwithstanding
his good-natured struggles against it for some time, was at last
compelled to join.

"I, all the while, was wiping my forehead behind my show-box; for I
never was in such a bath of heat in my life: not the hardest day's work