Page:Modern literature (1804 Volume 1).djvu/279

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farmer or a yeoman. He soon, however, informed the company he was a freeholder of Durham, and proceeded, in the usual style of vulgar loquacity, to open upon his own private affairs. He, it seems, farmed his own lands, and had two sons; one of whom, a stout young man, he was breeding up to husbandry: but the other, a poor puny lad, quite unfit for labour, therefore he was making him a genus, he was to be a great scolard; he was not more than seventeen years of age, and in two or three years more would be fit for the varsity; so Mister Syntax, our schoolmaster, tells me; and he is a perdigious great scolard. From his own affairs, this communicative person, in the natural course, proceeded to those of his neighbours, mentioned many names, totally unknown to his fellow-travellers, but, at last, came to one lady, of whom they and most others had