while at intervals a fond sigh escaped her, she from time to time
reminded me of the promises I had made never to betray her secret--
beautiful innocent! I would have died first. She was with me nearly two
hours, and left me with a flushed cheek, her letter in one hand and her
half-crown in the other--had I robbed her of it, I should have merited
the pillory.

My third customer was a stiff, tall, bony man, of about fifty-five, and
for this worthy I wrote an advertisement for a wife. He was thin, and
shy, and emaciated--a breathing skeleton, in the receipt of some hundred
and twenty pounds a-year; a martyr to the rheumatism, and a radical. He
required but little; a moderate fortune; tolerable person; good
education; perfect housewifery; implicit obedience; and, finally, wound
up the list of requisites from mere lack of breath, and modestly
intimated that youth would not be considered an objection, provided that
great prudence and rigid economy accompanied it. He was the veriest
antidote to matrimony I ever beheld!

My calling prospered. I wrote letters of condolence and of
congratulation; made out bills, and composed valentines; became the
friend of every pretty girl and fine youth in the parish; and never
breathed one of their mighty secrets in the wrong quarter. In the midst
of this success, a new ambition fired me--I had been an author for
months; but though I had found my finances more flourishing, the bays
bloomed not upon my brow; and I was just about to turn author in good
earnest, when a distant relation died, and bequeathed to me an annuity
of four hundred pounds a-year; and I have been so much engaged ever
since in receiving the visits of some hitherto unknown relatives and
connexions, that I have only been able to compose the title-page, and to
send this hint to destitute young gentlemen who may have an epistolatory