fficers of justice. For my own part, I
can lay my hand upon my heart, and safely say, that I forgive from
my soul the fellow by whom I was made a prisoner, although the
circumstances of his behaviour were treacherous, wicked, and profane.
You must know, Mr. Pickle, I was one day called into my chapel, in order
to join a couple in the holy bands of matrimony; and, my affairs being
at that time so situated, as to lay me under apprehensions of an arrest,
I cautiously surveyed the man through a lattice which was made for that
purpose, before I would venture to come within his reach. He was clothed
in a seaman's jacket and trousers, and had such an air of simplicity in
his countenance, as divested me of all suspicion. I therefore, without
further scruple, trusted myself in his presence, began to exercise
the duty of my function, and had actually performed one half of the
ceremony, when the supposed woman, pulling out a paper from her bosom,
exclaimed, with a masculine voice, 'Sir, you are my prisoner; I have got
a writ against you for five hundred pounds.' I was thunderstruck at this
declaration, not so much on account of my own misfortune, which, thank
Heaven, I can bear with patience and resignation, as at the impiety of
the wretch, first, in disguising such a worldly aim under the cloak of
religion; and, secondly, in prostituting the service, when there was no
occasion for so doing, his design having previously taken effect. Yet I
forgive him, poor soul! because he knew not what he did; and I hope you,
Sir Simple, will exert the same Christian virtue towards the man by whom
you were likewise overreached."

"Oh! d-- the rascal," cried the knight; "were I his judge, he should
be condemned to flames everlasting. A villain! to disgrace me in such
a manner, before almost all the fashionable company in town." Our hero
expressing a curiosity to know the particulars of this adventure, the
knight gratified his desire, by telling him, that one evening, while
he was engaged in a party of cards, at a drum in the house of a certain
lady of quality, he was given to understand by one of the servants, that
a stranger, very richly dressed, was just arrived in a chair, preceded
by five footmen with flambeaux, and that he refused to come upstairs,
until he should be introduced by Sir Simple. "Upon this notice,"
continued the knight, "I judged it was some of my quality friends; and,
having obtained her ladyship's permission to bring him up, w