competitors the theory of attraction--and was the best informed,
mischievous, little rascal in the whole school. My family were in great
doubt what to do with so prodigious a wonder; one said the law, another
the church, a third talked of diplomacy, and a fourth assured my mother,
that if I could but be introduced at court, I should be lord chamberlain
in a twelvemonth. While my friends were deliberating, I took the liberty
of deciding; I enlisted, in a fit of loyal valour, in a marching
regiment; my friends made the best of a bad job, and bought me an
ensigncy.

"I recollect I read Plato the night before I went to battle; the next
morning they told me I ran away. I am sure it was a malicious invention,
for if I had, I should have recollected it; whereas I was in such a
confusion that I cannot remember a single thing that happened in the
whole course of that day. About six months afterwards, I found myself out
of the army, and in gaol; and no sooner had my relations released me from
the latter predicament, than I set off on my travels. At Dublin, I lost
my heart to a rich widow (as I thought); I married her, and found her as
poor as myself. God knows what would have become of me, if I had not
taken to drinking; my wife scorned to be outdone by me in any thing; she
followed my example, and at the end of a year I followed her to the
grave. Since then I have taken warning, and been scrupulously sober.--
Betty, my love, another pint of purl.

"I was now once more a freeman in the prime of my life; handsome, as you
see, gentlemen, and with the strength and spirit of a young Hercules.
Accordingly I dried my tears, turned marker by night, at a gambling
house, and buck by day, in Bond-street (for I had returned to London). I
remember well one morning, that his present Majesty was pleased, en
passant, to admire my buckskins--tempora mutantur. Well, gentlemen, one