18 Sample of some Gentleman's Autobiography. 



" Sir," said I, " what do you mean ? Is my identity questioned ? Have 

 you not the copy of my uncle's will in your pocket ?" 



" Don't talk to me about your uncle's will : that's how you've done me, 

 vagabond !" 



" Vagabond ! Sir," said I ; " you don't question the fact of my respected 

 relative a man of known wealth having, as I stated, bequeathed me 

 5000Z. payable on my becoming twenty-five." 



" No, wretch villain monster !" replied he, snatching up a chair and 

 menacing me with it most frightfully ; "but I find too late dolt that I was 

 that you attained that age, received the money, spent every shilling of it, and 

 were living by your wits long before I had the misfortune to know you. 

 D n your very looks ! You're thirty, if you're a day. Off with your 

 rings out with your watch. Strip." 



What could I do ? With a fellow of Herculean form, and in such a pas- 

 sion, it would have been absurd to contend. While he was divesting me 

 of my dressing coat and silk waistcoat, with as much violence as he could 

 venture upon without doing them an injury, I put my memory to its 

 utmost stretch, and a dim vision of an old attorney witnessing a release 

 to my uncle's executors, for the 50 OO/. he had left me, did certainly rise 

 up to my mind's eye ; but it vanished before I could fix it as a fact. 



Returning to the business in hand, I said to Thornhose, " If what you 

 allege were true, and the worst came to the worst, there are the two 

 Claudes and the Wouvermans, which, although you obliged me with them 

 for 501. each, are, as you asserted, worth a thousand pounds of any man's 

 money I have pawned them for only ten, and will discharge all obliga- 

 tion by handing you over the duplicates." 



" Curse the Claudes ! " said he, " where's that new hat ?" 



Deaf to reason, he proceeded to denude me; and after, at his instiga- 

 tion, I had clothed myself in the worst of half-a-dozen suits, which the 

 day before he had offered in a lump to a Jew for five-and-twenty shil- 

 lings, he desired the lovely Betsy to bring him his horse-pistol the one 

 on the right-hand side of his bed took me firmly by the collar, and 

 politely invited me to hear a case at Bow Street. 



As we passed through Covent Garden, a fellow was being whipped for 

 stealing vegetables j and the crowd caused us so much inconvenience, 

 that, accidentally, he went on one side of a lamp-post, and I on the other. 

 The consequence was that we were separated, and the coat which I wore 

 was stripped of a great part of its collar. Thinking he would get out of 

 the crowd as quickly as possible, I hastened to do the same -, but on look- 

 ing carefully round for him in one of the alleys between Chandos Street 

 and the Strand, he was nowhere to be seen. Without me, it did not seem 

 likely that he would go before the magistrate ; so that if I went thither, 

 I could but exculpate myself on a mere ex-parte statement. I therefore 

 determined on taking some future opportunity of doing myself justice, but 

 felt by far too indignant ever again to enter his house, and strolled in a 

 contrary direction. 



About sunset I found myself seated on a mile-stone, in one of the beau- 

 tiful solitary lanes between the roads to Uxbridge and Harrow. As a cab 

 passed me I leaned my head upon my hand, and felt fatigued. When it 

 had rolled a few yards on, it was pulled up I heard it returning it 

 stopped directly opposite me. Thus deliberately confronted, as it were, I 

 could scarcely do otherwise than look up. By the side of a little hunch- 



