"I went to the shop of old Flaxman to have a figure repaired, and whilst I was standing there I heard a child cough behind the counter. I looked over, and there I saw a little boy seated on a small chair, with a large chair before him, on which lay a book he was reading. His fine eyes and beautiful forehead interested me, and I said, 'What book is that?' He raised himself on his crutches, bowed, and said, 'Sir, it is a Latin book, and I am trying to learn it.' "'Aye, indeed!' I answered. 'You are a fine boy, but this is not the proper book. I will bring you a right one to-morrow.' "I did as I promised, and the acquaintance thus casually begun ripened into one of the best friendships of my life." It is a picture! The child of seven trying patiently to make out his Latin book--his weakly frame on one chair, the unwieldy volume spread out before him on another. The beautiful eyes and brow, the winning smile, and the long, brown hair curling to the shoulders. But the wheel of his fortune seemed as if it had got a turn. Mr. Matthew was as good as his word, and brought him the promised book, and more followed. Translations of old Greek fables and stories from Homer that stirred the imagination of the boy. Then followed the fascinating adventures of Don Quixote. These fired his brain. How great and how heroic it seemed to him to rescue maidens in distress, to set the wrongs of the world right. So strong a hold did the thought take of the imagination of the child that one day, hobbling on his little crutches, he started off for Hyde Park in the hope that he might perchance find some forlorn maiden in need of his protection! But no old-world lady of the kind did he happen on among the thousands of teeming London--either in the Park or Kensington Gardens--and he had to come home cast down and disappointed. Meantime he strove and worked and laboured in his own childish way--with perhaps no great present results--receiving now and then even a check from which the sensitive mind recoiled, as when one day he showed an artist a drawing of a human eye, to be met with the quizzical question, "Is that an oyster?" Perhaps more secretly after that, but still as perseveringly as ever, he worked. Long years after, a friend gazing on these early works was struck with proofs of his diligence as a child, and asked him how he had managed to do them. "Sir," Flaxman answered, "we are never too young to learn what is useful, or too old to grow wise and good." When he was about ten years old a better gift than any fortune could bestow was granted to him. The feebleness of childhood seemed to leave him. The sickly frame seemed suddenly to knit itself together. The weakly limbs gradually strengthened, and the boy was able to throw away his crutches.