In a letter addressed to his mother about this time, the boy is full of Lloyd, undisguisedly proud of Lloyd, believes in Lloyd.

"When I peruse them over" (_i.e._ those fifteen communications to the press), "I feel absolutely astonished," he naively confesses, "at the different subjects which I have discussed, and the style in which they are written.

Indeed it is altogether a matter of surprise that I have met with such signal success, seeing I do not understand _one single rule of grammar_, and having a very inferior education." The printer's lad was plainly not lacking in the bump of approbativeness, or the quality of self-assertiveness.

The quick mother instinct of Fanny Garrison took alarm at the tone of her boy's letter.

Possibly there was something in Lloyd's florid sentences, in his facility of expression, which reminded her of Abijah.