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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
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