you have perused these pages, should you think them trifling and
impertinent, I only beg leave to tell you that the poor author wrote
them under some twitching qualms of conscience, arising from a
suspicion that he was doing what he ought not to do; a predicament he
has more than once been in before.

I have not the most distant pretensions to assume that character which
the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call a gentleman. When at
Edinburgh last winter I got acquainted in the _Herald's_ office; and,
looking through that granary of honors, I there found almost every name
in the kingdom; but for me,

My ancient but ignoble blood
Has crept thro' scoundrels ever since the flood.

Gules, purpure, argent, etc., quite disowned me.

My father was of the north of Scotland, the son of a farmer, and was
thrown by early misfortunes on the world at large; where, after many
years' wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large quantity
of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my
little pretensions to wisdom. I have met with few who understood men,
their manners and their ways, equal to him; but stubborn, ungainly
integrity, and headlong, ungovernable irascibility, are disqualifying
circumstances; consequently, I was born a very poor man's son. For the
first six or seven years of my life my father was gardener to a worthy
gentleman of small estate in the neighbourhood of Ayr. Had he
continued in that station, I must have marched off to be one of the
little underlings about a farmhouse; but it was his dearest wish and
prayer to have it in his power to keep his children under his own eye