ely to
fill with great reputation, and in which I should have many
opportunities of promoting his interest in return; and he pleased
himself with imagining the mutual benefits that we should confer, and
the advances that we should make by our united strength.

8. Away, therefore, he went, equally warm with friendship and ambition,
and left me to prepare acknowledgements against his return. At length he
came back, and told me that he had met in his way a party going to
breakfast in the country, that the ladies importuned him too much to be
refused, and that having passed the morning with them, he was come back
to dress himself for a ball, to which he was invited for the evening.

9. I have suffered several disappointments from taylors and
perriwig-makers, who, by neglecting to perform their work, withheld my
patrons from court, and once failed of an establishment for life by the
delay of a servant, sent to a neighbouring shop to replenish a
snuff-box.

10. At last I thought my solicitude at an end, for an office fell into
the gift of _Hippodamus_'s father, who being then in the country, could
not very speedily fill it, and whose fondness would not have suffered
him to refuse his son a less reasonable request. _Hippodamus_ therefore
set forward with great expedition, and I expected every hour an account
of his success.

11. A long time I waited without any intelligence, but at last received
a letter from Newmarket, by which I was informed, that the races were
begun, and I knew the vehemence of his passion too well to imagine that
he could refuse himself his favourite amusement.

12. You will not wonder that I was at last weary of the patronage of
young men, especially as I found them not generally to promise much
greater fidelity as they advanced in life; for I observed that what they
gained in steadiness, they lost in benevolence, and grew colder to my
interest as they became more diligent to promote their own.

13. I was convinced that their liberality was only profuseness, that, as
chance directed, they were equally generous to vice and virtue, that
they were warm, but because they were thoughtless, and counted the
support of a friend only amongst other gratifications of passion.

14. My resolution was now to ingratiate myself with men whose reputation
was established, whose high stations enabled them to prefer me, and
whose age exempted them from sudden changes of inclination; I was
considered as a man of part