CHAPTER XI. 



I HAVE noticed several of my friends and ac- 

 quaintances whose characters stood high in my 

 estimation. I have now another to introduce, the 

 play-fellow of my youth, Thomas Lawson, as 

 remarkable as any of them. He left Tyneside, his 

 and my home, and came to Newcastle about 1777 

 or '78, to launch out into the world of exertion 

 and turmoil ; and, from his abilities and integrity, 

 he seemed well befitted to make a great figure in 

 it, and, had he been spared, he* would, in my 

 opinion, have shone out like another Benjamin 

 Franklin. He was for a short time one of my 

 schoolfellows at Ovingham ; but, from his father 

 having been beggared by the failure of a coal- 

 owner for whom he had been employed many 

 years, my young friend was obliged to leave 

 school, and to seek out some employment for 

 himself, while his mother brought up a large 

 family with the small profits of a public house, 

 the sign of the White Horse in Ovingham. The 

 house was his father's, but the brewer got it for 

 what was owing to him 'for ale. This brewer, 

 however, being a generous man, still did not take 

 the house as his own, but permitted the family 

 to keep it, for the support of themselves and some 

 of the younger children. In the interim, he took 

 up his abode in my father's house as a home, 

 his mother having been much respected by my 

 mother, a close intimacy having long subsisted 



