cloudy reverse at which I have already hinted. For some time the
ruin of my father's affairs had been prevented by the sums which his
eloquence had wrung from the well-meaning Mr. Elford. Hugh was no
contemptible orator on these occasions. Hope seldom forsook him, and
he built so securely on what he hoped might come to pass as sometimes
to assert the thing had already happened. Such convenient mistakes are
daily made. If indeed the good graces of fortune would but have kept
pace with his expectations, England would not have afforded a more
flourishing or gallant yeoman. But, like monopolizers in general,
he was apt to speculate a little too deeply. Eager to enjoy, he was
impatient to obtain the means of enjoyment. So that, at one time,
the turning up of the jack at all fours was to make his fortune; but
how provoking! it happened to be the ten: at another it depended
on a duck-wing cock, which (who could have foreseen so strange an
accident?) disgraced the best feeder in the kingdom, by running away:
and it more than once did not want half a neck's length of being
realized by a favourite horse; yet was lost, contrary to the most
accurate calculations which, as the learned in these matters affirm,
had been made from Wheatherby's Racing Calendar.

Thus to repeated disappointments in his bets and his bargains, and to
his neglect of his farming affairs, it was owing that, in anno domini
---- when I was nine years and a half old, after having expended
the property with which he had been supplied, and incurred debts to
the amount of little less than a thousand pounds, my father found
it prudent to depart by night in the basket of the stage coach for
London. And prudent it certainly was, for his effects had not only
been seized in execution of a bond and judgment, but the bailiffs from
all quarters were at his heels.