A few months antecedent to this event, a circumstance occurred to Hodgkinson the relation of which properly comes in here. Two persons, genteelly dressed, coming to his mother’s house, called for a room and some beer, and asked if they could get dinner. It was Sunday, and John, as usual, spent the day at home. He was busily employed in the entry making a bridge for a fiddle, and, as he cut away, accompanied his labour with a song, upon which a person belonging to the house[3] chid him angrily or rather very severely for singing on the sabbath. He made no other reply than that of changing from a soft song, which he barely hummed, to the laughing song of Linco in Cymon, which he roared out obstreperously, by way of asserting his independence. A verbal scuffle ensued, which he still interlarded with bursts of song and laughter; the door of the room opened; the two gentlemen interfered, and calling him into the parlour, requested him to sing Linco’s song through for them. He complied; they lavished encomiums on his performance; and one of them said to the other “I’ll be hanged if he does not sing it much better than Wilder,”[4] These words John never forgot; and he owned to this writer, about six years ago, that they still tingled in his ear, though, at the time they were uttered, he did not know who was meant by Wilder. The person who said this patted him on the head, stroked down his hair, affectionately, and added “You are a dear boy. May God Almighty bless and prosper you!” The other gave him a crownpiece, and desired him to keep it for his sake. Had he given him a hundred crowns they would have been nothing to the honied words of the former. In truth, the leading foible of Hodgkinson through life, was vanity--the great taproot of all his irregularities and errors. He was quite agog to learn who those two men might be: he asked, but no one knew them--they were strangers. In the afternoon, however, they were joined by some players who were performing in the town; and from one of those he learned that the two strangers were from Ireland--He who gave him the crownpiece being a gentleman of the name of Comerford, a merchant--he who gave him his blessing, a Mr. Dawson, a player of Dublin, who was an acting assistant, and a kind of purveyor for the manager of the theatre in that city, and stepfather to the celebrated William Lewis. The Mr. Wilder alluded to was many years an actor and singer in Dublin and the original Linco and colonel Oldboy of that city.