No. I.

"'I will sit down and write for the good of the people--for (said I to
myself, pulling off my spectacles, and drinking up the remainder of my
sixpen'worth) it cannot be but people must be sick of these same
rascally politics. All last winter nothing but--God defend me! 'tis
tiresome to think of it.' I immediately flung the pamphlet down on the
table, and taking my hat and cane walked out of the coffee-house.

"I kept up as smart a pace as I could all the way home, for I felt
myself full of something, and enjoyed my own thoughts so much, that I
was afraid of digesting them, lest any should escape me. At last I
knocked at my own door.--'So!' said I to the maid who opened it, (for I
never would keep a man; not, but what I could afford it--however, the
reason is not material now,) 'So!' said I with an unusual smile upon my
face, and immediately sent her for a quire of paper and half a hundred
of pens--the only thing I had absolutely determined on in my way from
the coffee-house. I had now got seated in my arm chair,--I am an infirm
old man, and I live on a second floor,--when I began to ruminate on my
project. The first thing that occurred to me (and certainly a very
natural one) was to examine my common-place book. So I went to my desk
and took out my old faithful red-leather companion, who had long
discharged the office of treasurer to all my best hints and memorandums:
but, how was I surprised, when one of the first things that struck my
eyes was the following memorandum, legibly written, and on one of my
best sheets of vellum:--'Mem.--_Oct. 20th, 1769, left the Grecian
after having read ----'s Poems, with a determined resolution to write a
Periodical Paper, in order to reform the vitiated taste of the age; but,
coming home and finding my fire out, and my maid gone abroad, was
obliged to defer the execution of my plan to another opportunity._'