e I was born, I do not remember such a string of casualties
as happened to me and mine, all within the period of one short fortnight.
To say nothing connected with the playacting business, which was
immediately before--first came Mungo Glen's misfortune with regard to the
blood-soiling of the new nankeen trowsers, the foremost of his
transactions, and a bad omen--next, the fire, and all its wonderfuls, the
saving of the old bedridden woman's precious life, and the destruction of
the poor cat--syne the robbery of the hen-house by the Eirish ne'er-do-
weels, who paid so sweetly for their pranks--and lastly, the hoax, the
thieving of the cheese-toaster without the handle, and the banishment of
the spaewife.

These were awful signs of the times, and seemed to say that the world was
fast coming to a finis; the ends of the earth appearing to have combined
in a great Popish plot of villany. Every man that had a heart to feel,
must have trembled amid these threatening, judgment-like, and calamitous
events. As for my own part, the depravity of the nations, which most of
these scenes showed me, I must say, fell heavily upon my spirit; and I
could not help thinking of the old cities of the plain, over the house-
tops of which, for their heinous sins and iniquitous abominations, the
wrath of the Almighty showered down fire and brimstone from heaven, till
the very earth melted and swallowed them up for ever and ever.

These added to the number, to be sure; but not that I had never before
seen signs and wonders in my time. I had seen the friends of the
people,--and the scarce years,--and the bloody gulleteening over-bye
among the French blackguards,--and the business of Watt and Downie nearer
home, at our own doors almost, in Edinburgh like,--and the calling out of
the volunteers,--and divers sea-fights at Camperdown and elsewhere,--and
land battles countless,--and the American war, part o't,--and awful
murders,--and mock fights in the Duke's Parks,--and highway
robberies,--and breakings of all the Ten Commandments, from the first to
the last; so that, allowing me to have had but a common spunk of
reflection, I must, like others, have cast a wistful eye on the ongoings
of men: and, if I had not strength to pour out my inward lamentations, I
could not help thinking, with fear and trembling, at the rebellion of
such a worm as man, against a Power whose smallest word could extinguish
his existence, and blot him out in a twinkling fro