friends nor character to depend upon, he was forced to enter his name at one of the public offices of intelligence, for a fervice in any merchant's family, or counting-house, for which laft his education had qualified him.

I foon heard, fays our valet of an alderman's family, in which a person was wanted to have fome care of the accounts of the mafter's traffic, and to wait at table, and do other offices of the family, but without a livery. I was humble enough to accept the propofal. I waited on my intended mafter. I was admitted into a pair of great gates, the outfide of which was covered with Dr. Richard Rock's bills, directions to kidnappers for the plantations, and advertisements for the Univerfal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleafure: toward the lower verge of one of them, near the wicket in the centre, was cut a hole, armed with the half of an old pair fheers, which served as a fcraper for people's feet, and at the corners were the remains of a kind of buttreffes, at once worn into holes, and tinged to a dingy red, a red that might be smelt, by the continued evacuations of a certain kind, of the whole male part of the neighbourhood. I was surprised to see the porter who opened the door to me appear with a fhoe-brush in his hand, having been used to families where the feveral offices were more diftinctly appointed to the different domeftics: this, however, was foon after explained to me, and I found this was no fervant of the family, but a shoe-cleaner, who rented the dry space within the gateway as his shop (if the working place of a man who fells nothing may be call by that name) at the price of ten fhillings a-year, and the additional agreement of japanning gratis all the fhoes and clogs in the family.

As I paffed along the yard, I faw, as Shakespear expreffes it, a beggarly account of dirty boxes, old trunks, chefts, and cafes of rough boards, half of them tumbling to pieces; and toward the end, where there was a larger chafm, ftood fourteen or fifteen empty hogfheads: On one fide was a feperate place, the back and two ends of which had been furnished by the walls of the adjoining buildings, and which had been form'd into a kind of apartment, by the bringing down a flanting covering of edge tiles from the upper part of the wall, to meet a front made of old boards painted, to preserve them, though the ufelefs labour of the plane had been faved; and furnished with a long aperture, in which was placed a dirty cafement, the frame and fhape of which bespoke its once having officiated as the covering

to

to a cucumber-bed. The door of this apartment was locked, but I was informed by the occafional porter already mentioned, that it was the compting-houfe.

I was admitted through a hall, furnifhed with three chairs and a round wainscot table; the window feats in front, and two forms or branches at the top and bottom of the room rendered a greater number of feats unneceffary; and with feven leather buckets, fome of them maimed in the handles, and others deficient as to bottoms, which were hung up in manner of trophies out of reach, as if to put the beholder in mind they were not formed for any thing but looking at: at the end of the room was the foot of an old-fashioned ftair-cafe; my conductor pointed that way, and I was making the natural mistake of going up, but I was directed to a dark continuation of the ftairs downward, which I had not seen before, and which led to the fubterranean regions. I entered the kitchen, where I found my master washing his hands and face at the fink, my miftrefs and the young ladies drinking tea upon the dreffer, and the heir of the family fitting on an inverted butter-tub, and reading the catalogue of a fale at the Royal Exchange coffee-house.

I could have knocked my brains out against the wainfcot, if the apartment had furnished any, for throwing myself in the way of fuch a family: but my mortification was confiderably increased by the mafter of the house obferving that I was a comely wholefome-looking young man: the lady affented to the opinion, and mifs turning me about by the skirts, added, that the thought I was for all the world like cousin Abraham's foot-boy; the mother replied, the very moral of him; the father affented, and I was received into the family. There are no people fo cautious in point of character as to the perfons they receive into their families, as thofe of the city, and indeed none with fo fubftantial reason. I have been informed that there would be great ftrictness on this head at the office, and had taken the neceffary precautions, by directing my new mafter to lady Calm, and firft putting her in mind by a letter, that our characters were in one another's hands, and as fhe treated mine on this occafion, I fhould hereafter treat her ladyfhip's. This prudent piece of defiance produced what all the intreaties in the world would have attempted in vain : I was recommended to the merchant in fuch a manner as perhaps no fervant ever was before, or ever will be hereafter, and a written teftimonial was preffed upon him to be deli

vered into my hands, importing the fame, and with many other qualifications mentioned in it, which were of no confequence to him, but which, as her ladyfhip obferved, might be of ufe to me if ever I fhould think of getting into the polite part of the town again; and which her real friendship and good-will to me would not let me be without, in cafe of my wanting a recommendation I had fo much right to, at a time when the might be in the country.

It was heartily against my inclination that I fet myfelf down in this ftrange, and, as it appeared to me, mean, miferable, and dirty family; but I had advanced too far to draw back, and I determined to keep in it as a means of being the best fecurity, till fomething more calculated for my acceptance should offer itself.

Though the keeping of accounts was in a manner new to me by my long difufe of it, I found it become mighty familiar, after a very few trials. I was careful to an uncommon degree, from a sense of the vaft importance of every figure, and the confequences that might have attended a mistake, a sense which people lose by being habituated to it. I confidered my mafter as a man labouring to live, and whofe induftry for a twelve-month might be rendered fruitless by one mistake of my pen: This was not indeed exactly the cafe, though it appeared fo to me; but the confideration was of fuch weight with me, that I paid an attention to his affairs, which he acknowledged he never faw before in a servant, and which endeared me in an uncommon manner to him.

If he liked me the more the longer he knew me, a farther acquaintance with the nature of his affairs, gave me a better opinion of them: I found, before I had lived a week in this busy and unoftentatious part of the world, that the fame appearances were to be met with almost every where. I have feen a man come in from a walk in the rain from Islington, and purchase, by report only, goods to the amount of a fortune, for which his word has paffed as current cafh, and have had another interrupt the mending a hole in his flocking to pay me a thousand pound upon demand.

I had heard a great deal of the pomp, fplendour, and profufion in which the merchants, whofe names are known about St. James's, live, and I had oportunities of finding that the report hardly did them juftice: It was on the ftrength of this opinion that I had entered the fervice of VOL. VI. I

this

this body of men; but I found I had got in among a lower order of them. My mafter, and a number of others of the fame ftamp, who were his friends and acquaintance, were not without the ambition of appearing great, and making a figure in the world as well as the others, but they were only in the way to it. They were fcraping together and faving for the fifty-five beft years of their lives what was to make them eminent in the five remaining ones, when they were paft the enjoyment of them: It was a maxim I found with them all, that while a man is in trade let him be fo; when he can play with his business then let him do what he pleafes. My mafter, whom I had hitherto held in a contemptible light, I by a very odd accident discovered to be worth not less than forty thousand pounds. He had fet himself at fixty thousand for his stint, and when he fhould have arrived at that, determined to make the figure which he faw among fome of his neighbours..

It will appear odd that I became fo exactly acquainted with the fortune of a perfon I had lived. fo little a time with; but the means of my coming to the knowledge of it will appear yet more fingular. In the gayer part of the town, oftentation makes the way for knowing what every man is worth, if we will reduce the account to about one third of what it is ftated at; but in the city it is otherwife, people are nice to the utmoft punctilio as to their credit, and fo far as this depends upon their fortune, they take care that shall be no fecret. They would be hurt in the tendercft point, if it could be suspected they set themfelves at more than their stock, or dealt for more than they had to answer; but beyond this they have no ambition, or, if they have, it is rather the odd one of blinding the world as to what they are poffeffed of, perhaps that they may be suspected of more than they really have.

* Under these circumftances, it will not appear easy to conceive how I became fo intimately acquainted with the Women are the fortune and affairs of my new master.

keys to every fecret, as well in the compting-house as in the cabinet. They are often employed by people of addrefs to this purpose, and when they are not, they as often become the occafional means of the difcoveries. I mentioned in my account of the family I was now got into, an unmarried daughter: Mifs was at this time near fixteen: fhe had been bred at a fchool in the next lane, where the daughters of all the carpenters and glaziers in the neighbourhood had their education; Madam la Gouvernante had inculcated:

inculcated in her a dread of every thing that had the appearance of a man, as if the poison of a viper had been hid under his tongue; and the mother had affisted the prudent care of this fage matron, by keeping her out of the way of every thing that could have undeceived her.

When the family went on a visit, or to a public place, which perhaps happened twice a year, the young lady was locked up in her nursery with the maid of the houfe, and her dols for her companions; and when any company came in on a vifit, as that damfel had fome other employment on these occafions, the young lady was fent to her former governess till the hurry should be over. She was informed that eating more than half a belly full at a meal hurt the complexion, and the maxim that maids should be seen and not heard, had been fo often repeated to her, that fhe hardly knew whether she had the ufe of her tongue.

She had conceived a dread of every thing that had the appearance of a gentleman, as a monfter that would eat her up, and never faw a laced coat in the street that she did not take fhelter from it in the next fhop: all this terror could not, however, fupprefs her ideas of the happiness of an union between man and woman. The liberty fhe faw the wife of the fhoe-cleaner at the gate, who fometimes was admitted to do the lower offices of the family, enjoy, ftung her on the comparison with her own confined ftate; and fhe had at length found the way to separate the ideas of gentleman and man, and though he had not the courage to disobey her parents in thinking of the one, the found no law in her mind against indulging herself with the thoughts of having the other for a companion. She was too much in terror of a rebuff to give the leaft hint of her thoughts to father, mother, or fervants, but perfectly convinced that the wife of any body was a happier creature than the daughter of her father, fhe had refolved to make her choice, and rifk the confequences.

'Coufin Abraham's footboy had fometimes been in the kitchen, waiting for the answer to some meffage, while mifs was drinking tea with the maid there. He had been the only thing of the male-kind fhe had been fuffered to fee within ten yards of her, and confequently fhe had no ground to fuppofe the reft of the fpecies at all fuperior to him. She had determined on marrying unknown to her father or any body, and had fixed upon this youth as the hufband: fhe gave him many kind looks, and received as many from him, before fhe ventured to difclofe her fenti