companies, called forth his wonderful powers, and gratified him with admiration, to which no man could be insensible." [Illustration: MRS THRALE] Such was the beginning of this friendship, as told by Boswell, who was not introduced to the Thrale family for some years and could not always conceal a little jealousy of this new intimacy of his hero. Mrs Thrale has left us a book of _Anecdotes of Dr Johnson_, and, though Boswell declares that they are not always accurate, we must quote a few passages from them to shew how Johnson used to the full the "comforts and even luxuries" of a well-furnished home. For he did not trouble to adapt himself to the household; he made the household adapt itself to him, "often sitting up as long as the fire and candles lasted, and much longer than the patience of the servants subsisted." "Dr Johnson" says Mrs Thrale "was always exceeding fond of chemistry; and we made up a sort of laboratory at Streatham one summer, and diverted ourselves with drawing essences and colouring liquors. But the danger Mr Thrale found his friend in one day when I was driven to London, and he had got the children and servants round him to see some experiments performed, put an end to all our entertainment; so well was the master of the house persuaded, that his short sight would have been his destruction in a moment, by bringing him close to a fierce and violent flame. Indeed it was a perpetual miracle that he did not set himself on fire reading a-bed, as was his constant custom, when exceedingly unable even to keep clear of mischief with our best help; and accordingly the fore-top of all his wigs were burned by the candle down to the very net-work. Mr Thrale's valet-de-chambre, for that reason, kept one always in his own hands, with which he met him at the parlour-door, when the bell had called him down to dinner, and as he went up stairs to sleep in the afternoon, the same man constantly followed him with another.... Mr Johnson's amusements were thus reduced to the pleasures of conversation merely.... Conversation was all he required to make him happy; and when he would have tea made at two o'clock in the morning, it was only that there might be a certainty of detaining his companions round him. On that principle it was that he preferred winter to summer, when the heat of the weather gave people an excuse to stroll about, and walk for pleasure in the shade, while he wished to sit still on a chair, and chat day after day, till somebody proposed a drive in the coach; and that was the most delicious moment of his life. 'But the carriage must stop sometime (as he said), and the people would come home at last'; so his pleasure was of short duration. I asked him why he doated on a coach so? and received for answer, 'That in the first place, the company was shut in with him _there_; and could not escape, as out of a room: in the next place he heard all that was said in a carriage, where it was my turn to be deaf': and