emarkable personage of your family? Say the word
and he shall appear."

This youth, who had been the most insolent and obstreperous in the whole
society, and was now depressed with the same proportion of fear, alarmed
at the proposal, assured the magician he had no curiosity of that sort
remaining; and that what he had already seen would, he hoped, have a
good effect upon his future life and conversation. Every one of these
heroes made an acknowledgment and profession of the same kind, some of
which were attended with tears; and Hadgi having provided chairs for the
whole company, they departed exceedingly crest-fallen. Two of the number
actually sickened with the agitation they had undergone, while our
hero and his associate made themselves merry with the success of their
enterprise.

But this scheme of fortune-telling did not engross his whole attention;
he still continued to maintain his appearance in the beau monde; and, as
his expense far exceeded his income, strove to contract intimacies with
people of interest and power; he showed himself regularly at court, paid
his respects to them in all places of public diversion, and frequently
entered into their parties, either of pleasure or cards. In the
course of this cultivation, he happened one evening, at a certain
chocolate-house, to overlook a match of piquet, in which he perceived
a couple of sharpers making a prey of a young nobleman, who had neither
temper nor skill sufficient to cope with such antagonists.

Our hero, being a professed enemy to all knights of industry, could
not bear to see them cheat in public with such insolent audacity. Under
pretence of communicating some business of importance, he begged the
favour of speaking to the young gentleman in another corner of the
room, and in a friendly manner cautioned him against his opponents. This
hot-headed representative, far from thinking or owning himself obliged
to Pickle for his good counsel, looked upon his advice as an insult upon
his understanding; and replied, with an air of ferocious displeasure,
that he knew how to take care of his own concerns, and would not suffer
either him or them to bubble him out of a shilling.

Peregrine, offended at the association, as well as at the ingratitude
and folly of this conceited coxcomb, expressed his resentment, by
telling him, that he expected at least an acknowledgment for his candid
intention; but he found his intellects too much warped by his vanity
to pe