My mother at this time was pregnant; the sister I have mentioned was
dead; but I had a fine healthy brother about three years old, and it
was agreed that we should follow to the great city, as soon as he had
found employment; which, according to his notions, was the most easy
thing imaginable.

It so happened, however, that he had not been there a full month
before the trifling sum he and my mother had collected for his
immediate existence was lost, by the turn of a die; contrary to his
certain conviction that he had discovered, at a hazard table, the
ready way to repair all past mistakes.

To send for wife and children was now out of the question. Destitute
of support, without the means of obtaining another shilling, after
fasting a day and a half, his courage, that is his appetite, could
hold out no longer, and he enlisted for an East-India soldier; having
first convinced himself, by the soundest arguments, that he should
immediately be made a serjeant; which perhaps was no improbable
calculation; that he should then soon get a commission, and that he
should undoubtedly return a commanding officer, or general in chief,
to the surprise of his friends and the utter confusion of the rector,
and all those whom he accounted his persecutors.

That these great events might not actually have happened who shall
pretend to say? Miracles of old were plentiful; and even in these
unbelieving days strange things have come to pass. But all his
unbounded hopes, many of which he had stated in his last letter to
my mother, were unexpectedly subverted, by an accident to which it
appears men in general are subject. He caught a fever, while the ship
in which he was to be a passenger lay waiting in the Downs for a wind;