watch, of a very unusual size, and telling the hour, said that he
had an appointment.

"Is it so late?" said the young gentleman; "then I am afraid I have
missed an appointment already; but the truth is, I am cursedly given
to missing of appointments."

When the grazier and he were gone, Harley turned to the remaining
personage, and asked him if he knew that young gentleman. "A
gentleman!" said he; "ay, he is one of your gentlemen at the top of
an affidavit. I knew him, some years ago, in the quality of a
footman; and I believe he had some times the honour to be a pimp.
At last, some of the great folks, to whom he had been serviceable in
both capacities, had him made a gauger; in which station he remains,
and has the assurance to pretend an acquaintance with men of
quality. The impudent dog! with a few shillings in his pocket, he
will talk you three times as much as my friend Mundy there, who is
worth nine thousand if he's worth a farthing. But I know the
rascal, and despise him, as he deserves."

Harley began to despise him too, and to conceive some indignation at
having sat with patience to hear such a fellow speak nonsense. But
he corrected himself by reflecting that he was perhaps as well
entertained, and instructed too, by this same modest gauger, as he
should have been by such a man as he had thought proper to
personate. And surely the fault may more properly be imputed to
that rank where the futility is real than where it is feigned: to
that rank whose opportunities for nobler accomplishments have only
served to rear a fabric of folly which the untutored hand of
affectation, even among the meanest of mankind, can imitate with