that he fairly astonished his parents by his wonderful learning, and even surprised a certain uncle, who had seen rather more of the world. This relative, butler to a Wisbeach lawyer, was so struck with his nephew's abilities, that he felt sure his master had only to see him, and he would secure such talent at once by giving him a place in his office.
Manifold were the preparations for John's entrance into the great world. Mrs Clare cut up an old gown expressly to make him a pair of trousers, and actually committed the extravagance of buying him a pair of gloves. He went by boat to Wisbeach, and arrived at the great man's house. Uncle Morris took him under his wing, and presented him to his master. The lawyer looked at the poor lad in his big breeches and tight little coat, ordered him to be well taken care of, and sent back again as soon as might be to Helpstone.
From lawyer's clerk in a large county town to general servant at the village public-house was rather a fall; nevertheless the latter was by far the more congenial situation, affording him opportunities he otherwise would not have had of becoming one truest of the and sweetest of England's rural poets.
The landlord of the Blue Bell was an easy man, and treated him as if he had been his own son. John's chief occupation was to tend his master's cattle. This gave him ample time for reading, and he used to wander about the Heath, book in hand. Unfortunately, books were very scarce in Helpstone, and those he chiefly got were the old favourites which the pedlars sold: "Valentine and Orson," "Cinderella," "Jack the Giant-Killer," and others like them.
Well-fed and without a care, in these happy days the boy lived on enchanted ground.
"Nature looked on him with a 'witching eye,
Her pleasing scenes were his delightful book,
Where he, while other louts roam'd heedless by,
With wild enthusiasm used to look.
The king-cup vale, the gravel-paved brook,
Were paradise with him to move among;
And haply sheltering in some lonely nook,
He often sat to see it purl along,
And, fir'd with what he saw, humm'd o'er his simple song."
