oke forth into these
ejaculations: "This is fine usage from a servant to his master--very
fine! damnation! but no matter, you shall pay for this, you dog, you
shall; I'll do your business--yes, yes, I'll teach you to lift your
hand against me." So saying, he retired, and left me under dreadful
apprehensions, which vanished entirely at our next meeting, when he
behaved with unusual complacency, and treated me with a glass of punch
after dinner.

By this conduct I got the ascendancy over him in a short time, and
became so necessary to him, in managing his business while he was
engaged at the bottle, that fortune began to wear a kinder aspect; and
I consoled myself for the disregard of my former acquaintance, with the
knowledge I daily imbibed by a close application to the duties of my
employment, in which I succeeded beyond my own expectation. I was on
very good terms with my master's wife, whose esteem I acquired and
cultivated, by representing Mrs. Potion in the most ridiculous lights
my satirical talents could invent, as well as by rendering her some
Christian offices, when she had been too familiar with the dram
bottle, to which she had oftentimes recourse for consolation, under the
affliction she suffered from a barbarous husband.

In this manner I lived, without hearing the least tidings of my uncle
for the space of two years, during which time I kept little or no
company, being neither in a humour to relish nor in a capacity to
maintain much acquaintance; for the Nabal my master allowed me no wages,
and the small perquisites of my station scarcely supplied me with the
common necessaries of life. I was no longer a pert unthinking coxcomb,
giddy with popular applause, and elevated with the extravagance of
hope: my misfortunes had taught me how little the caresses of the world,
during a man's prosperity, are to be valued by him; and how seriously
and expeditiously he ought to set about making himself independent of
them. My present appearance, therefore, was the least of my care, which
was wholly engrossed in laying up a stock of instruction that might
secure me against the caprice of fortune for the future. I became such
a sloven, and contracted such an air of austerity, that everybody
pronounced me crestfallen; and Gawky returned to town without running
any risk from my resentment, which was by this time pretty much cooled,
and restrained by prudential reasons so effectually that I never so much
as thought of obta