went very early to the next weekly meeting, and
was entertaining a small circle very successfully with a minute
representation of my lord mayor's show, when the colonel entered
careless and gay, sat down with a kind of unceremonious civility, and
without appearing to intend any interruption, drew my audience away to
the other part of the room, to which I had not the courage to follow
them. Soon after came in the lawyer, not indeed with the same attraction
of mien, but with greater powers of language: and by one or other the
company was so happily amused, that I was neither heard nor seen, nor
was able to give any other proof of my existence than that I put round
the glass, and was in my turn permitted to name the toast.

My mother, indeed, endeavoured to comfort me in my vexation, by telling
me, that perhaps these showy talkers were hardly able to pay every one
his own; that he who has money in his pocket need not care what any man
says of him; that, if I minded my trade, the time will come when lawyers
and soldiers would be glad to borrow out of my purse; and that it is
fine, when a man can set his hands to his sides, and say he is worth
forty thousand pounds every day of the year. These and many more such
consolations and encouragements, I received from my good mother, which,
however, did not much allay my uneasiness; for having by some accident
heard, that the country ladies despised her as a cit, I had therefore no
longer much reverence for her opinions, but considered her as one whose
ignorance and prejudice had hurried me, though without ill intentions,
into a state of meanness and ignominy, from which I could not find any
possibility of rising to the rank which my ancestors had always held.

I returned, however, to my master, and busied myself among thread, and
silks, and laces, but without my former cheerfulness and alacrity. I had
now no longer any felicity in contemplating the exact disposition of my
powdered curls, the equal plaits of my ruffles, or the glossy blackness
of my shoes; nor heard with my former elevation those compliments which
ladies sometimes condescended to pay me upon my readiness in twisting a
paper, or counting out the change. The term of Young Man, with which I
was sometimes honoured, as I carried a parcel to the door of a coach,
tortured my imagination; I grew negligent of my person, and sullen in my
temper; often mistook the demands of the customers, treated their
caprices and objection