spent as soon as acquired. The fact was, that he was not a man who could
ever grow rich; he was extremely extravagant in all things--loved women
and drinking, and was always striving to get into the society of people
above him. In order to do this, he affected great carelessness of money;
and if, at a race or a cock-fight, any real gentlemen would go home with
him, he would insist upon treating them to the very best of every thing.

"Thus, Sir, he was always poor, and at his wit's end, for means to supply
his extravagance. He introduced me to three or four gentlemen, as he
called them, but whom I have since found to be markers, sharpers, and
black-legs; and this set soon dissipated the little honesty my own habits
of life had left me. They never spoke of things by their right names;
and, therefore, those things never seemed so bad as they really were--to
swindle a gentleman, did not sound a crime, when it was called 'macing a
swell'--nor transportation a punishment, when it was termed, with a
laugh, 'lagging a cove.' Thus, insensibly, my ideas of right and wrong,
always obscure, became perfectly confused: and the habit of treating all
crimes as subjects of jest in familiar conversation, soon made me regard
them as matters of very trifling importance.

"Well, Sir, at Newmarket races, this Spring meeting, Thornton and I were
on the look out. He had come down to stay, during the races, at a house I
had just inherited from my father, but which was rather an expense to me
than an advantage; especially as my wife, who was an innkeeper's
daughter, was very careless and extravagant. It so happened that we were
both taken in by a jockey, whom we had bribed very largely, and were
losers to a very considerable amount. Among other people, I lost to a Sir
John Tyrrell. I expressed my vexation to Thornton, who told me not to
mind it, but to tell Sir John that I would pay him if he came to the
town; and that he was quite sure we could win enough, by his certain game