His income at this time was derived solely from literary jobs, and was understood to be very limited. What he earned he spent chiefly for books, particularly for such as would assist him in perfecting that striking monument of his varied and profound research, his new translation and edition of Malte-Brun. For this labor the time had been estimated, and the publishers had made him an allowance, which, if he had worked like other men, would have amounted to eight dollars a day. But Percival would let nothing go out of his hands imperfect; a typographical error, even, I have heard him say, sometimes depressed him like actual illness. He translated and revised so carefully, he corrected so many errors and added so many footnotes, that his industry actually devoured its own wages; and his eight dollars gradually diminished to a diurnal fifty cents. Percival made no merely ceremonial calls, few friendly visits, and attended no parties. If he dropped in upon a family of his acquaintance, he rarely addressed himself to a lady. Otherwise there was nothing peculiar in his deportment; for, if silent, he was not embarrassed,--and if he talked, it was without any appearance of self-consciousness. Judging from his isolated habits, some persons supposed him misanthropic. Let me give one instance of his good-nature. One of the elder professors of Yale had fallen into a temporary misappreciation with the students, who received his instructions, to say the least, with an ill-concealed indifference. They whispered during his lectures, and in other ways rendered themselves strenuously disagreeable to the sensitive nerves of the professor. Indignant at such behavior toward a worthy and learned man, who had been his own instructor, Percival proposed a plan for stopping the annoyance. It was, that a number of old graduates, professors, and others, himself being one, should attend the lectures, listen to them with the respect they merited, and so, if possible, bring the students to a sense of propriety and of the advantages they were neglecting.