mementos. To speak the truth, he had wantonly involved himself in a
multitude of small book-debts of this stamp, which, notwithstanding
Eugenius's frequent advice, he too much disregarded; thinking, that
as not one of them was contracted thro' any malignancy;--but, on the
contrary, from an honesty of mind, and a mere jocundity of humour, they
would all of them be cross'd out in course.

Eugenius would never admit this; and would often tell him, that one day
or other he would certainly be reckoned with; and he would often add,
in an accent of sorrowful apprehension,--to the uttermost mite. To which
Yorick, with his usual carelessness of heart, would as often answer with
a pshaw!--and if the subject was started in the fields,--with a hop,
skip, and a jump at the end of it; but if close pent up in the social
chimney-corner, where the culprit was barricado'd in, with a table and
a couple of arm-chairs, and could not so readily fly off in a
tangent,--Eugenius would then go on with his lecture upon discretion in
words to this purpose, though somewhat better put together.

Trust me, dear Yorick, this unwary pleasantry of thine will sooner or
later bring thee into scrapes and difficulties, which no after-wit can
extricate thee out of.--In these sallies, too oft, I see, it happens,
that a person laughed at, considers himself in the light of a person
injured, with all the rights of such a situation belonging to him; and
when thou viewest him in that light too, and reckons up his friends,
his family, his kindred and allies,--and musters up with them the many
recruits which will list under him from a sense of common danger;--'tis
no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes,--thou hast
got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm
of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou
wilt never be convinced it is so.

I cannot suspect it in the man whom I esteem, that there is the least
spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in these sallies--I believe
and know them to be truly honest and sportive:--But consider, my dear
lad, that fools cannot distinguish this,--and that knaves will not: and
thou knowest not what it is, either to provoke the one, or to make merry
with the other:--whenever they associate for mutual defence, depend upon
it, they will carry on the war in such a manner against thee, my dear
friend, as to make thee heartily sick of it, and of thy life too.

Re