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an education somewhat above her rank, her conversation was very agreeable. Ralph read plays to her every evening. They became intimate. She took another lodging, and he followed her. They lived for some time together; but Ralph being without employment, she having a child, and the profits of her business not sufficing for the maintenance of three, he resolved to quit London and try a country school. This was a plan in which he thought himself likely to succeed, as he wrote a fine hand and was versed in arithmetic and accounts. But considering the office as beneath him, and expecting some day to make a better figure in the world, when he should be ashamed of its being known that he had exercised a profession so little honourable, he changed his name and did me the honour of assuming mine. He wrote to me soon after his departure, informing me that he was settled at a small village in Berkshire. In his letter he recommended Mrs. T***, the milliner to my care, and requested an answer, directed to Mr. Franklin, schoolmaster at N***.

He continued to write to me frequently, sending me large fragments of an epic poem he was composing, and which he requested me to criticise and correct. I did so, but not without endeavouring to prevail on him to renounce this pursuit. Young had just published one of his Satires. I copied and sent him a great part of it; in which the author demonstrates the folly of cultivating the Muses, from the hope, by their instrumentality of rising in the world. It was all to no purpose; after paper of his poem continued to arrive every

paper

post.

Meanwhile Mrs T*** having lost, on his account, both her friends and her business, was frequently in distress. In this dilemma she had recourse to me; and to extricate her from her difficulties, I lent her all the money I could spare. I felt a little too much fondness for her: Having at that time no ties of religion, and taking advantage of her necessitous situation, I attempted liberties (another error of my life) which she

repelled with becoming indignation. She informed Ralph of my conduct; and the affair occasioned a breach between us. When he returned to London, he gave me to understand that he considered all the obligations he owed me as annihilated by this proceeding; whence I concluded that I was never to expect the payment of what money I had lent him, or advanced on his account. I was the less afflicted at this, as he was unable to pay me; and as, by loosing his friendship, I was relieved at the same time from a very heavy burden.

I now began to think of laying by some money. The printing house of Watt's near Lincoln's Inn Fields, being a still more considerable one than that in which I worked, it was probable I might find it more advantageous to be employed there. I offered myself, and was accepted; and in this house I continued during the remainder of my stay in London.

On my entrance I worked at first as a pressman, conceiving that I had need of bodily exercise, to which I had been accustomed in America, where the printers work alternately as compositors and at the press. I drank nothing but water. The other workmen, to the number of about fifty, were great drinkers of beer. I carried occasionally a large form of letters in each hand, up and down stairs, while the rest employed both hands to carry one. They were surprised to see, by this and many other examples, that the American Aquatic, as they used to call me, was stronger than those who drank porter. The beer boy had sufficient employment during the whole day in serving that house alone. My fellow-pressman drank every day a pint of beer before breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese for breakfast, one between breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again at about six o'clock in the afternoon, and another after he had finished his day's work. This custom appeared to me abominable; but he had need, he said, of all this beer, in order to acquire strength to work.

I endeavoured to convince him that bodily strength furnished by the beer, could only be in proportion to

the solid part of the barley dissolved in the water of which the beer was composed; that there was a larger portion of flour in a penny loaf, and that consequently if he eat this loaf and drank a pint of water with it, he would derive more strength from it than from a pint of beer. This reasoning, however, did not prevent him from drinking his accustomed quantity of beer, and paying every Saturday night a score of four or five shillings a week for this cursed beverage; an expense from which I was wholly exempt. Thus do these poor devils continue all their lives in a state of voluntary wretchedness and poverty.

At the end of a few weeks, Watts having occasion for me above stairs as a compositor, I quitted the press. The compositors demanded of me garnish money afresh. This I considered as an imposition, having already paid below. The master was of the same opinion, and desired me not to comply. I thus remained two or three weeks out of the fraternity. I was consequently looked upon as excommunicated; and whenever I was absent, no little trick that malice could suggest was left unpracticed upon me. I found my letters mixed, my pages transposed, my matter broken, &c. &c. all which was attributed to the spirit that haunted the chapel,* and tormented those who were not regularly admitted. I was at last obliged to submit to pay notwithstanding the protection of the master; convinced of the folly of not keeping up a good understanding with those among whom we are destined to live.

After this I lived in the utmost harmony with my fellow-labourers, and soon acquired considerable influence among them. I proposed some alterations in the laws of the chapel, which I carried without opposition. My example prevailed with several of them to renounce their abominable practice of bread and

* Printing offices in general are thus denominated by the workmen; the spirit they call by the name of Ralph, F

cheese with beer; and they procured, like me, from a neighbouring house, a good bason of warm gruel, in which was a small slice of butter, with toasted bread and nutmeg. This was a much better breakfast, which did not cost more than a pint of beer, namely, three halfpence, and at the same time preserved the head clearer. Those who continued to gorge themselves with beer, often lost their credit with the publican, from neglecting to pay their score. They had then recourse to me, to become security for them; their light, as they used to call it, being out. I attended at the pay-table every Saturday evening, to take up the little sum of money which I had made myself answerable for; and which sometimes amounted to nearly thirty shillings a week. This circumstance, added to my reputation of being a tolerable good gabber, or, in other words, skilful in the art of burlesque, kept up my importance in the chapel. I had besides recommended myself to the esteem of the master by my assiduous application to business, never observing Saint Monday. My extraordinary quickness in composing always procured me such work as was most urgent, and which is commonly best paid; and thus my time passed away in a very pleasant

manner.

My lodging in Little Britain being too far from the printing house, I took another in Duke street, opposite the Roman chapel. It was at the back of an Italian ware-house. The house was kept by a widow, who had a daughter, a servant, and a shop boy; but the latter slept out of the house. After sending to the people with whom I had lodged in Little Britain, to inquire into my character, she agreed to take me in at the same price, three and sixpence a week; contenting herself, she said, with so little, because of the security she would derive, as they were all women, from having a man lodge in the house.

She was a woman rather advanced in life, the daughter of a clergyman. She had been educated a Protestant ; but her husband, whose memory she highly revered, had converted her to the Catholic religion. She had

lived in habits of intimacy with persons of distinction; of whom she knew various anecdotes as far back as the time of Charles II. Being subject to fits of the gout which often confined her to her room, she was some. times disposed to see company. Her's was so amusing to me that I was glad to pass the evening with her as often as she desired it. Our supper consisted only of half an anchovy a-piece, upon a slice of bread and butter, with half a pint of ale between us. But the enter

tainment was in her conversation.

The early hours I kept, and the little trouble I occasioned in the family, made her loath to part with me; and when I mentioned another lodging I had found nearer the printing house, at two shillings a week, which fell in with my plan of saving, she persuaded me to give it up, making herself an abatement of two shillings; and thus I continued to lodge with her, during the remainder of my abode in London,at eighteen pence a week.

In the garret of the house there lived, in the most retired manner, a lady seventy years of age, of whom I received the following account from my landlady. She was a Roman Catholic. In her early years she had been sent to the continent, and entered a convent with the design of becoming a nun; but the climate not agreeing with her constitution, she was obliged to return to England, where, as there was no monasteries, she made a vow to lead a monastic life, in as rigid a manner as circumstances would permit. She accordingly disposed of all her property, to be applied to charitable uses, reserving to herself only twelve pounds a year; and of this small pittance she gave a part to the poor, living on water-gruel, and never making use of fire but to boil it. She had lived in this garret a great many years, without paying any rent to the successive Catholic inhabitants that had kept the house; who indeed considered her abode with them as a blessing. A priest came every day to confess her. "I have asked her," said my landlady, "how, living as she did, she could find so much employment for a confessor?" To which she answered, that it was impossible to avoid vain thoughts.

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