fear of the ill consequences of looking at me. In this condition
I ran the gauntlope (so I think I may justly call it) through
rows of sailors and watermen, few of whom failed of paying their
compliments to me by all manner of insults and jests on my
misery. No man who knew me will think I conceived any personal
resentment at this behavior; but it was a lively picture of that
cruelty and inhumanity in the nature of men which I have often
contemplated with concern, and which leads the mind into a train
of very uncomfortable and melancholy thoughts. It may be said
that this barbarous custom is peculiar to the English, and of
them only to the lowest degree; that it is an excrescence of an
uncontrolled licentiousness mistaken for liberty, and never shows
itself in men who are polished and refined in such manner as
human nature requires to produce that perfection of which it is
susceptible, and to purge away that malevolence of disposition of
which, at our birth, we partake in common with the savage
creation. This may be said, and this is all that can be said;
and it is, I am afraid, but little satisfactory to account for
the inhumanity of those who, while they boast of being made after
God's own image, seem to bear in their minds a resemblance of the
vilest species of brutes; or rather, indeed, of our idea of
devils; for I don't know that any brutes can be taxed with such
malevolence. A sirloin of beef was now placed on the table, for
which, though little better than carrion, as much was charged by
the master of the little paltry ale-house who dressed it as would
have been demanded for all the elegance of the King's Arms, or
any other polite tavern or eating-house! for, indeed, the
difference between the best house and the worst is, that at the
former you pay largely for luxury, at the latter for nothing.