I found my honest neighbour smoking his pipe at his own door, and informing him that I had a small bill upon him, he read it twice over.

'You can read the name, I suppose,' cried I, 'Ephraim Jenkinson.' 'Yes,' returned he, 'the name is written plain enough, and I know the gentleman too, the greatest rascal under the canopy of heaven.
This is the very same rogue who sold us the spectacles.

Was he not a venerable looking man, with grey hair, and no flaps to his pocket-holes?
And did he not talk a long string of learning about Greek and cosmogony, and the world ?' To this I replied with a groan.

'Aye,' continued he, 'he has but that one piece of learning in the world, and he always talks it away whenever he finds a scholar in company; but I know the rogue, and will catch him yet.' Though I was already sufficiently mortified, my greatest struggle was to come, in facing my wife and daughters.

No truant was ever more afraid of returning to school, there to behold the master's visage, than I was of going home.