elf,
nor incline to impose on my readers that there was anything supernatural
in the case of it, yet I fancy the oddness of the thing may, under the
story I am going to tell, prove not disagreeable.

In a journey which Thomas had made into Herefordshire, with his first
master, he had contracted there an acquaintance with a young woman,
daughter to a farmer, in tolerable circumstances. This girl without
saying anything to the man, fell it seems desperately in love with him,
and about three months after he left the country, died. One night after
his coming to live with this last master, he fancied he saw her in a
dream, that she stood for some time by his bedside, and at last said,
_Thomas, a month or two hence you will be in danger of a fever, and when
that is over of a greater misfortune. Have a care, you have hitherto
always behaved as an honest man; do not let either poverty or
misfortunes tempt you to become otherwise;_ and having so said, she
withdrew. In the morning the fellow was prodigiously confounded, yet
made no discovery of what had happened to any but the person who lay
with him, though the thing made a very strong impression on his spirits,
and might perhaps contribute not a little to his falling ill about the
time predicted by the phantom he had seen.

This fever soon brought him very low, and obliged him to make away with
most of his things in order to support himself. Upon recovery he found
himself in lamentable circumstances, being without friends, without
money, and out of business. Unfortunately for him, coming along the
Haymarket one evening, he happened to follow a gentleman somewhat in
liquor, who knowing him, desired that he would carry him home to his
house in St. Martin's Lane, to which Thomas readily agreed. But as they
were going along thither, a crowd gathered about the gentleman, who
became as quarrelsome as they, and took it into his head to box one of
the mob, in order to do which more conveniently, he gave Smith his hat
and cane, and his wig. Smith held them for some time, the mob forcing
them along like a torrent, till the gentleman, whose name was Brown,
made up a court near Northumberland House, and Smith thereupon marched
off with the things, the necessity he was under so far blinding him that
he made no scruple of attempting to sell them the next day; by which
means Mr. Brown hearing of them, he caused Smith to be apprehended as a
street-robber, and to be committed to Newgate, thoug