"On Friday, March 22, having set out early from Henley, where we had lain the preceding night, we arrived at Birmingham about nine o'clock and, after breakfast, went to call on his old schoolfellow Mr Hector. A very stupid maid, who opened the door, told us, that 'her master was gone out....' He said to her, 'My name is Johnson; tell him I called. Will you remember the name?' She answered with rustick simplicity, in the Warwickshire pronunciation, 'I don't understand you, Sir.'--'Blockhead, (said he,) I'll write.' I never heard the word _blockhead_ applied to a woman before, though I do not see why it should not, when there is evident occasion for it. He, however, made another attempt to make her understand him, and roared loud in her ear, '_Johnson_,' and then she catched the sound." However, they met Mr Hector in the street and Boswell rejoiced to see the two old friends together. Indeed, he would have liked to prolong their stay in Birmingham in order to get more information about Johnson's early life, but Johnson himself was "impatient to reach his native city." "We drove on ... in the dark, and were long pensive and silent. When we came within the focus of the Lichfield lamps, 'Now (said he,) we are getting out of a state of death.' We put up at the Three Crowns, not one of the great inns, but a good old fashioned one, which was ... the very next house to that in which Johnson was born.... We had a comfortable supper, and got into high spirits. I felt all my Toryism glow in this old capital of Staffordshire.... I indulged in libations of ale." At Lichfield Boswell met many old friends of Johnson--Mrs Lucy Porter, his step-daughter, Mr Peter Garrick, brother of the actor, Mr Seward, and others. Johnson "expatiated in praise" of the city and its inhabitants, but it appeared to Boswell that there was "very little business going forward." "'Surely, Sir, (said I,) you are an idle set of people.' 'Sir, (said Johnson,) we are a city of philosophers, we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands.'" From Lichfield they set out for Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, the home of another old schoolfellow of Johnson's--the Rev. Dr Taylor. "There came for us an equipage properly suited to a well-beneficed clergyman;--Dr Taylor's large roomy post-chaise, drawn by four stout plump horses, and driven by two steady jolly postillions, which conveyed us to Ashbourne.... Dr Taylor ... was a diligent justice of the peace, and presided over the town of Ashbourne.... His size, and figure, and countenance, and manner, were that of a hearty English 'Squire, with the parson super-induced: and I took particular notice of his upper servant, Mr Peters, a decent grave man, in purple clothes, and a large white wig, like the butler or _major domo_ of a Bishop."