eing killed by these abominable tricks.

Thus five or six little idle creatures, who might be earning a trifle
by knitting at home, who might be useful to the public by working in
the field, and who might assist their families by learning to get
their bread twenty honest ways, are suffered to lie about all day in
the hope of a few chance halfpence, which, after all, they are by no
means sure of getting. Indeed, when the neighboring gentlefolks found
out that opening the gate was the family trade, they soon left off
giving any thing. And I myself, though I used to take out a penny
ready to give, had there been only one to receive it, when I saw a
whole family established in so beggarly a trade, quietly put it back
again into my pocket, and gave nothing at all. And so few travellers
pass that way, that sometimes, after the whole family have lost a day,
their gains do not Amount to two-pence.

As Giles had a far greater taste for living by his wits than his work,
he was at one time in hopes that his children might get a pretty penny
by _tumbling_ for the diversion of travellers, and he set about
training them in that indecent practice; but, unluckily, the moors
being level, the carriages travelled faster than the children tumbled.
He envied those parents who lived on the London road, over the
Wiltshire downs, which downs being very hilly, it enables the tumbler
to keep pace with the traveller, till he sometimes extorts from the
light and the unthinking a reward instead of a reproof. I beg leave,
however, to put all gentlemen and ladies in mind, that such tricks are
a kind of apprenticeship to the trades of begging and thieving; and
that nothing is more injurious to good morals than to encourage the
poor in any habits which may lead them to live upon chance.

Giles, to be sure, as his children grew older, began to train them to
such other employments as the idle habits they had learned at the gate
very properly qualified them for. The right of common, which some of
the poor cottagers have in that part of the country, and which is
doubtless a considerable advantage to many, was converted by Giles
into the means of corrupting his whole family; for his children, as
soon as they grew too big for the trade of begging at the gate, were
promoted to the dignity of thieving on the moor.

Here he kept two or three asses, miserable creatures, which, if they
had the good fortune to escape an untimely death by starving, did not
fail