for the first time. A young nobleman of very
distinguished family undertook to be my conductor. Alas! to what scenes
did he introduce me! To places of debauchery and dens of destruction. I
need not detail particulars. From the lures of the courtesan we went
to an adjoining gaming room. Though I thought my knowledge of cards
superior to those I saw play that night, I touched no card nor dice.
From this my conductor, a brother officer, and myself adjourned to Pall
Mall. We returned to our lodgings about six o'clock in the morning.

'I could think of nothing but Faro's magic centre, and longed for the
next evening, when I determined to enter that path which has led so many
to infamy, beggary, and suicide. I began cautiously, and for some
time had reason to be satisfied with my success. It enabled me to
live expensively. I made golden calculations of my future fortune as I
improved in skill. My manuals were treatises on gaming and chances, and
no man understood this doctrine better than I did. I, however, did
not calculate the disparity of resisting powers--my purse with _FIFTY_
guineas, and the Faro bank with a hundred thousand. It was ruin only
which opened my eyes to this truism at last.

'Good meats, good cooking, and good wines, given gratis and plenteously,
at these houses, drew many to them at first, for the sake of the
society. Among them I one evening chanced to see a clerical prig, who
was incumbent of a parish adjoining that in which my mother lived. I was
intoxicated with wine and pleasure, when I, on this occasion, entered a
haunt of ruin and enterprising avarice in Pall Mall. I played high and
lost in proportion.

'The spirit of adventure was now growing on me every day. I was
sometimes very successful. Yet my health was impaired, and my temper
soured by the alternation of good and bad fortune, and my pity or
contempt for those with whom I associated. From the nobleman, whose
acres were nightly melting in the dice box, there were adventurers
even to the _UNFLEDGED APPRENTICE_, who came with the pillage of his
unsuspecting master's till, to swell the guilty bank of Dame N-- and
Co. Were the Commissioners of Bankruptcy to know how many citizens are
prepared for them at those houses, they would be bound to thank them.

'Many a score of guineas have I won of tradesmen, who seemed only
to turn an honest penny in Leadenhall Street, Aldgate, Birchin Lane,
Cornhill, Cheapside, Holborn, the Borough, and other easter