honestly transcribing my actual
adventures, one by one,--the things I have done, and the Men and Women I
have known,--I should imperceptibly swell a Narrative, which was at
first meant to attain no great volume, to most deplorable dimensions.
And the World will no longer tolerate Huge Chronicles in Folio, whether
they relate to History, to Love or Adventure, to Voyages and Travels, or
even to Philosophy, Mechanics, or the Useful Arts. The world wants
smart, dandy little volumes, as thin as a Herring, and just as Salt. For
these two reasons, then, do I nerve myself to a sudden leap, and entreat
you now to think no longer of John Dangerous as a raw youth of eighteen
summers, but as a sturdy, well-set man of thirty-three.

Yet, lest mine Enemies and other vile Rascal Fellows that go about the
town taking away the characters of honest people for mere Envy and
Spitefulness' sake, lest these petty curmudgeons should, in their own
sly saucy manner, Mop and Mow, and Grin and Whisper, that If I am silent
as to Fifteen Years of my Sayings and Doings, I have good cause for
holding my peace,--lest these scurril Slanderers should insinuate that
during this time I lay in divers Gaols for offences which I dare not
avow, that I was concerned in Desperate and Unlawful Enterprises which
brought upon me many Indictments in the King's Courts, or that I was
ever Pilloried, or held to Bail for contemptible misdemeanours,--I do
here declare and affirm that for the whole of the time I so pass over I
earned my bread in a perfectly Honest, Legal, and Honourable Manner, and
that I never once went out of the limits of the United Kingdom. I have
heard, indeed, a Ridiculous Tale setting forth that, finding myself
Destitute in London after the Chaplain, Mr Pinchin, and I had parted
company, and after escaping from the Pressgang, I enlisted in the Foot
Guards. The preposterous Fable goes on to say that quickly mastering my
Drill, and being a favourite with my officers, whom I much pleased with
my Alacrity and Intelligence, although they were much given to laugh at
my assumptions of superior Birth, and nicknamed me "Gentleman Jack,"--I
was promoted to the rank of Corporal, and might have aspired to the
dignity of a Sergeant's Halbert, but that in a Mad Frolic one night I
betook myself to the road as a Footpad, and robbed a Gentleman, coming
from the King's Arms, Kensington, towards the Weigh House at
Knightsbridge, of fourteen spade guineas, a gold watc