the time of his
execution between seventeen and eighteen years old.

The Life of THOMAS SMITH, a Highwayman

There is a certain commendable tenderness in human nature towards all
who are under misfortunes, and this tenderness is in proportion to the
magnitude of those evils which we suppose the pitied person to labour
under. If we extend our compassion to relieving their necessities, and
feeling a regret for those miseries which they undergo, we undoubtedly
discharge the duties of humanity according to the scheme both of natural
religion and the laws laid down in the Gospel. Perhaps no object ever
merited it from juster motives than this poor man, who is the subject of
the following pages. His parents were people in tolerable circumstances
in Southwark; his father was snatched from him by death, while he was
yet a child, but his mother, as far as she was able, was very careful
that he should not pass his younger days without instruction, and an
uncle he then had, being pleased with the docile temper of the youth,
was at some expense also about his education. By this means he came to
read and write tolerably well, and gained some little knowledge of the
Latin tongue; and having a peculiar sweetness in his behaviour, it won
very much upon his relations, and encouraged them to treat him with
great indulgence.

But unfortunately for him, by the time he grew big enough to go out
apprentice, or to enter upon any other method of living, his friends
suddenly dropped off, and, by their death becoming in great want of
money, he was forced to resign all the golden hopes he had formed and
for the sake of present subsistance submit to becoming footman to a
gentleman, who was, however, a very good and kind master to him, till in
about a year's time he died also, and poor Smith was again left at his
wits' end. However, out of this trouble he was relieved by an Irish
gentleman, who took him into his service, and carried him over with him
to Dublin. There he met with abundance of temptations to fall into that
loose and lascivious course of life which prevails more in that city,
perhaps, than in any other in Europe. But he had so much grace at that
time as to resist it, and after a stay there of twenty months, returned
into England again, where he came into the service of a third master, no
less indulgent to him than the two former had been. In this last service
an odd accident befell him, in which, though I neither believe mys