_Sir Per_. Therefore, sir, I lay it before you.--Now, sir, with these
materials I set out a raw-boned stripling fra the north, to try my fortune
with them here in the south; and my first step intill the world was, a
beggarly clerkship in Sawney Gordon's counting house, here in the city of
London, which you'll say afforded but a barren sort of a prospect.

_Eger_. It was not a very fertile one indeed, sir.

_Sir Per_. The reverse, the reverse: weel, sir, seeing myself in this
unprofitable situation, I reflected deeply; I cast about my thoughts
morning, noon, and night, and markt every man and every mode of
prosperity,--at last I concluded that a matrimonial adventure, prudently
conducted, would be the readiest gait I could gang for the bettering of my
condition, and accordingly I set about it: now, sir, in this pursuit,
beauty! beauty!--ah! beauty often struck mine een, and played about my
heart! and fluttered, and beat, and knocked, and knocked, but the devil an
entrance I ever let it get;--for I observed, sir, that beauty--is
generally--a proud, vain, saucy, expensive, impertinent sort of a
commodity.

_Eger_. Very justly observed, sir.

_Sir Per_. And therefore, sir, I left it to prodigals and coxcombs, that
could afford to pay for it; and in its stead, sir, mark! I looked out for
an ancient, weel-jointured, superannuated dowager:--a consumptive,
toothless, ptisicky, wealthy widow,--or a shrivelled, cadaverous piece of
deformity in the shape of an izzard, or a appersi-and,--or, in short, ainy
thing, ainy thing that had the siller, the siller,--for that, sir, was the
north star of my affections. Do you take me, sir; was nai that right?