advantage from the calamities of others. I led weakness
and negligence into difficulties, only that I might
divert myself with their perplexities and distresses;
and violated every law of friendship, with no other
hope than that of gaining the reputation of smartness
and waggery.

I would not be understood to charge myself with
any crimes of the atrocious or destructive kind. I
never betrayed an heir to gamesters, or a girl to
debauchees; never intercepted the kindness of a
patron, or sported away the reputation of innocence.
My delight was only in petty mischief, and momentary
vexations, and my acuteness was employed not
upon fraud and oppression, which it had been
meritorious to detect, but upon harmless ignorance or
absurdity, prejudice or mistake.

This inquiry I pursued with so much diligence
and sagacity, that I was able to relate, of every man
whom I knew, some blunder or miscarriage; to
betray the most circumspect of my friends into follies,
by a judicious flattery of his predominant passion;
or expose him to contempt, by placing him in
circumstances which put his prejudices into action,
brought to view his natural defects, or drew the
attention of the company on his airs of affectation.

The power had been possessed in vain if it had
never been exerted; and it was not my custom to