nothing
here, you find, but a mouthful of oaths and an empty belly; and, by
the best accounts I have of him, he will give you nothing that's good
hereafter.

"'If used ill in our dealings with one man, we naturally go elsewhere.
Were it not worth your while, then, just to try how you may like the
usage of another master, who gives you fair promises at least to come
to him? Surely, my friends, of all stupidity in the world, his must be
the greatest, who, after robbing a house, runs to the thief-takers for
protection. And yet, how are you more wise? You are all seeking
comfort from one that has already betrayed you, applying to a more
malicious being than any thief-taker of them all; for they only decoy
and then hang you; but he decoys and hangs, and, what is worst of all,
will not let you loose after the hangman has done.'

"When I had concluded, I received the compliments of my audience, some
of whom came and shook me by the hand, swearing that I was a very
honest fellow, and that they desired my further acquaintance. I
therefore promised to repeat my lecture next day, and actually
conceived some hopes of making a reformation here; for it had ever
been my opinion, that no man was past the hour of amendment, every
heart lying open to the shafts of reproof, if the archer could but
take a proper aim."

His wife and children, naturally dissuading him from an effort which
seemed to them only to bring ridicule upon him, are met by a grave
rebuke; and on the next morning he descends to the common prison,
where, he says, he found the prisoners very merry, expecting his
arrival, and each prepared to play some gaol-trick on the Doctor.

"There was one whose trick gave more universal pleasure than all the
rest; for, observing the manner in which I had disposed my books on
the table before me, he very dexterously displaced one of them, and
put an obscene jest-book of his own in the place. However, I took no
notice of all that this mischievous group of little beings could do,
but went on, perfectly sensible that what was ridiculous in my attempt
would excite mirth only the first or second time, while what was
serious would be permanent. My design succeeded, and in less than six
days some were penitent, and all attentive.

"It was now that I applauded my perseverance and address, at thus
giving sensibility to wretches divested of every moral feeling, and
now began to think of doing them temporal services also, by rendering
the