are at the alehouse already! zounds! and confound them!' When he
came to the glass he takes up my note--'Ha! this fellow is worse
than me: what, does he swear with pen and ink?' But, reading on,
he found them to be his own words. The stratagem had so good an
effect upon him that he grew immediately a new man, and is learning
to speak without an oath; which makes him extremely short in his
phrases; for, as I observed before, a common swearer has a brain
without any idea on the swearing side; therefore my ward has yet
mighty little to say, and is forced to substitute some other vehicle
of nonsense to supply the defect of his usual expletives. When I
left him, he made use of 'Odsbodikins! Oh me! and Never stir
alive!' and so forth; which gave me hopes of his recovery. So I
went to the next I told you of, the gamester. When we first take
our place about a man, the receptacles of the pericranium are
immediately searched. In his I found no one ordinary trace of
thinking; but strong passion, violent desires, and a continued
series of different changes had torn it to pieces. There appeared
no middle condition; the triumph of a prince, or the misery of a
beggar, were his alternate states. I was with him no longer than
one day, which was yesterday. In the morning at twelve we were
worth four thousand pounds; at three, we were arrived at six
thousand; half an hour after, we were reduced to one thousand; at
four of the clock, we were down to two hundred; at five, to fifty;
at six, to five; at seven, to one guinea; the next bet to nothing.
This morning he borrowed half a crown of the maid who cleans his
shoes, and is now gaming in Lincoln's Inn Fields among the boys for
farthings and oranges, till he has made up three pieces, and then he
returns to White's into the best company in town."

Thus ended our first discourse; and it is hoped that you will