eaten up by the slugs and harrows of outrageous fortune, and have been
the object of such continual and extraordinary ill-luck, that I believe
it would melt the heart of a milestone to read of it--that is, if a
milestone had a heart of anything but stone.

Twelve of my adventures, suitable for meditation and perusal during the
twelve months of the year, have been arranged by me for this work. They
contain a part of the history of a great, and, confidently I may say,
a GOOD man. I was not a spendthrift like other men. I never wronged any
man of a shilling, though I am as sharp a fellow at a bargain as any in
Europe. I never injured a fellow-creature; on the contrary, on
several occasions, when injured myself, have shown the most wonderful
forbearance. I come of a tolerably good family; and yet, born to
wealth--of an inoffensive disposition, careful of the money that I
had, and eager to get more,--I have been going down hill ever since
my journey of life began, and have been pursued by a complication of
misfortunes such as surely never happened to any man but the unhappy Bob
Stubbs.

Bob Stubbs is my name; and I haven't got a shilling: I have borne the
commission of lieutenant in the service of King George, and am NOW--but
never mind what I am now, for the public will know in a few pages more.
My father was of the Suffolk Stubbses--a well-to-do gentleman of Bungay.
My grandfather had been a respected attorney in that town, and left my
papa a pretty little fortune. I was thus the inheritor of competence,
and ought to be at this moment a gentleman.

My misfortunes may be said to have commenced about a year before my
birth, when my papa, a young fellow pretending to study the law in
London, fell madly in love with Miss Smith, the daughter of a tradesman,