its own sake, a shrewd eye and keen relish for human weakness and
ridiculous infirmity, and the talent of petty fraud. Thus to this old
man there would be pleasure even in the consciousness, so
insupportable to some minds, that his whole life was a cheat upon the
world, and that, so far as he was concerned with the public, his
little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom. Every day
would furnish him with a succession of minute and pungent triumphs: as
when, for instance, his importunity wrung a pittance out of the heart
of a miser, or when my silly good-nature transferred a part of my
slender purse to his plump leather bag; or when some ostentatious
gentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who was richer than
himself; or when, though he would not always be so decidedly
diabolical, his pretended wants should make him a sharer in the scanty
living of real indigence. And then what an inexhaustible field of
enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly and achieve
such quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering spirit
by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge.

All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though I
had little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined to
admit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper to
him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had
compared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in
"wandering up and down upon the earth"; and indeed a crafty
disposition, which operates not in deep-laid plans, but in
disconnected tricks, could not have an adequate scope, unless
naturally impelled to a continual change of scene and society. My
reflections were here interrupted.

"Another visitor!" exclaimed the old showman.