which were they? how many chapters they contained? and such like: to all
which, Mr Adams privately said, he answered much better than Sir Thomas,
or two other neighbouring justices of the peace could probably
have done.

Mr Adams was wonderfully solicitous to know at what time, and by what
opportunity, the youth became acquainted with these matters: Joey told
him that he had very early learnt to read and write by the goodness of
his father, who, though he had not interest enough to get him into a
charity school, because a cousin of his father's landlord did not vote
on the right side for a churchwarden in a borough town, yet had been
himself at the expense of sixpence a week for his learning. He told him
likewise, that ever since he was in Sir Thomas's family he had employed
all his hours of leisure in reading good books; that he had read the
Bible, the Whole Duty of Man, and Thomas a Kempis; and that as often as
he could, without being perceived, he had studied a great good book
which lay open in the hall window, where he had read, "as how the devil
carried away half a church in sermon-time, without hurting one of the
congregation; and as how a field of corn ran away down a hill with all
the trees upon it, and covered another man's meadow." This sufficiently
assured Mr Adams that the good book meant could be no other than Baker's
Chronicle.

The curate, surprized to find such instances of industry and application
in a young man who had never met with the least encouragement, asked
him, If he did not extremely regret the want of a liberal education, and
the not having been born of parents who might have indulged his talents
and desire of knowledge? To which he answered, "He hoped he had profited
somewhat better from the books he had read than to lament his condition
in this world. That, for his part, he was perfectly content with the