The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I, by
Tobias Smollett

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Title: The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I

Author: Tobias Smollett

Release Date: May, 2003 [Etext #4084]
Posting Date: February 14, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEREGRINE PICKLE ***

Produced by Tapio Riikonen

THE ADVENTURES OF PEREGRINE PICKLE

In which are included Memoirs of a Lady of Quality

By Tobias Smollett

VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I.

An Account of Mr. Gamaliel Pickle--The Disposition of his Sister
described--He yields to her Solicitations, and returns to the Country.

In a certain county of England, bounded on one side by the sea, and at
the distance of one hundred miles from the metropolis, lived Gamaliel
Pickle, esq.; the father of that hero whose fortunes we propose to
record. He was the son of a merchant in London, who, like Rome, from
small beginnings had raised himself to the highest honours of the city,
and acquired a plentiful fortune, though, to his infinite regret, he
died before it amounted to a plum, conjuring his son, as he respected
the last injunction of a parent, to imitate his industry, and adhere to
his maxims, until he should have made up the deficiency, which was a sum
considerably less than fifteen thousand pounds.

This pathetic remonstrance had the desired effect upon his
representative, who spared no pains to fulfil the request of the
deceased: but exerted all the capacity with which nature had endowed
him, in a series of efforts, which, however, did not succeed; for by the
time he had been fifteen years in trade, he found himself five thousand
pounds worse than he was when he first took possession of his father's
effects; a circumstance that affected him so nearly, as to detach his
inclinations from business, and induce him to retire from the world to
some place where he might at leisure deplore his misfortunes, and, by
frugality, secure himself from want, and the apprehensions of a jail,
with which his imagination was incessantly haunted. He was often heard
to express his fears of coming upon the parish; and to bles