He
devoured books. He did not read them carefully, but quickly,
tearing the heart out of them. He cared for nothing else but
reading, and once when his father was ill and unable to attend to
his bookstall, he asked his son to do it for him. Samuel
refused. But the memory of his disobedience and unkindliness
stayed with him, and more than fifty years after, as an old and
worn man, he stood bare-headed in the wind and rain for an hour
in the market-place, upon the spot where his father's stall had
stood. This he did as a penance for that one act of
disobedience.
Johnson's father was a bookworm, like his son, rather than a
tradesman. He knew and loved his books, but he made little money
by them. A student himself, he was proud of his studious boy,
and wanted to send him to college. But he was miserably poor and
could not afford it. A well-off friend, however, offered to
help, and so at eighteen Samuel went to Oxford.
Here he remained three years. Those years were not altogether
happy ones, for Johnson's huge ungainly figure, and shabby,
patched clothes were matters for laughter among his fellow-
students.
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