rve, captain, how this pitiful little fellow
has copied the very curls--the colour, indeed, is different, but then
the form and foretop are quite similar." While he thus remonstrated in a
strain of vociferation, a venerable senator entered, and waddling up to
the delinquent, "Jackanapes!" cried he, "I will now let thee see I
can read something else than a newspaper, and that without the help of
spectacles: here is your own note of hand, sirrah, for money, which if
I had not advanced, you yourself would have resembled an owl, in not
daring to show your face by day, you ungrateful slanderous knave!"

In vain the astonished painter declared that he had no intention to
give offence, or to characterise particular persons: they affirmed
the resemblance was too palpable to be overlooked; they taxed him with
insolence, malice, and ingratitude; and their clamours being overheard
by the public, the captain was a bear, the doctor an ass, and the
senator an owl, to his dying day.

*****

Christian reader, I beseech thee, in the bowels of the Lord, remember
this example "while thou art employed in the perusal of the following
sheets; and seek not to appropriate to thyself that which equally
belongs to five hundred different people. If thou shouldst meet with a
character that reflects thee in some ungracious particular, keep thy
own counsel; consider that one feature makes not a face, and that
though thou art, perhaps, distinguished by a bottle nose, twenty of thy
neighbours may be in the same predicament."

THE ADVENTURES OF RODERICK RANDOM

CHAPTER I

Of my Birth and Education

I was born in the northern part of this united kingdom, in the house of
my grandfather, a gentleman of considerable fortune and influence, who
had on many occasions signalised himself in behalf of his country; and
was remarkable for his abilities in the law, which he exercised with
great success in the station of a judge, particularly against beggars,
for whom he had a singular aversion.

My father (his youngest son) falling in love with a poor relation, who
lived with the old gentleman in quality of a housekeeper, espoused
her privately; and I was the first fruit of that marriage. During her
pregnancy, a dream discomposed my mother so much that her husband,
tired with her importunity, at last consulted a highland seer, whose
favourable interpretation he would have secured beforehand by a
bribe, but found him incorruptible. She