village by the way. When we were shewn a room, I desired the
landlord, in my usual way, to let us have his company, with which
he complied, as what he drank would encrease the bill next
morning. He knew, however, the whole neighbourhood to which I was
removing, particularly 'Squire Thornhill, who was to be my
landlord, and who lived within a few miles of the place. This
gentleman he described as one who desired to know little more of
the world than its pleasures, being particularly remarkable for
his attachment to the fair sex. He observed that no virtue was
able to resist his arts and assiduity, and that scarce a farmer's
daughter within ten miles round but what had found him successful
and faithless. Though this account gave me some pain, it had a
very different effect upon my daughters, whose features seemed to
brighten with the expectation of an approaching triumph, nor was
my wife less pleased and confident of their allurements and
virtue. While our thoughts were thus employed, the hostess
entered the room to inform her husband, that the strange
gentleman, who had been two days in the house, wanted money, and
could not satisfy them for his reckoning. 'Want money!' replied
the host, 'that must be impossible; for it was no later than
yesterday he paid three guineas to our beadle to spare an old
broken soldier that was to be whipped through the town for dog-
stealing.' The hostess, however, still persisting in her first
assertion, he was preparing to leave the room, swearing that he
would be satisfied one way or another, when I begged the landlord
would introduce me to a stranger of so much charity as he
described. With this he complied, shewing in a gentleman who
seemed to be about thirty, drest in cloaths that once were laced.
His person was well formed, and his face marked with the lines of
thinking. He had something short and dry in his address, and