by this time the
punch had taken some little effect. "A good Lad, John. And now thou
mayst help me up to bed."

And so I did, for his Reverence had begun to stagger. Then a pallet was
found for me high up in the Roof of the Inn of the Three Archduchesses.
I forbore to grumble, for I had been used from my first going out into
the world to Hard Lodging. And that night I slept very soundly, and
dreamt that I was in the Great Four-post Bed at my Grandmother's in
Hanover Square.

Never had a Man, I suppose, in this Mortal World, ever so droll a master
as this Bartholomew Pinchin, of Hampstead, Esquire. 'Tis Tame, and may
be Offensive, for me to be so continually telling that he wrote himself
down _Armiger_, after my Promise to forego for the future such
recapitulation of his Title; but Mr. Pinchin was himself never tired of
dubbing himself Esquire, and you could scarcely be five Minutes in his
company without hearing of his Estate, and his Mamma, and his Right to
bear Arms. I, who was by birth a Gentleman of Long Descent, could not
forbear Smiling from time to time (in my Sleeve, be it understood, since
I was a Servant at Wages to him) at his ridiculous Assumptions. And
there are few things more Contemptible, I take it, than for a Man of
really good Belongings, and whose Lineage is as old as Stonehenge
(albeit, for Reasons best known to Himself, he permits his Pedigree to
lie Perdu), to hear an Upstart of Yesterday Bragging and Swelling that
he is come from this or from that, when we, who are of the true Good
Stock, know very well, but that we are not so ill-mannered as to say so,
that he is sprung from Nothing at all. I think that if the Heralds were
to make their Journeys now, as of Yore, among the Country Churchyards,
and hack out from the Headstones the sculptured cognizances of those
having no manner of Right to them, the Stone-Masons about Hyde Park
Corner would all make Fortunes from the orders that would be given to
them for fresh Tombs. Not a mealy-mouthed Burgess now, whose
great-grandfather sold stocking hose to my Lord Duke of Northumberland,
but sets himself up for a Percy; not a supercilious Cit, whose Uncle
married a cast-off waiting-woman from Arundel Castle, but vaunts himself
on his alliance with the noble house of Howard; not a starveling
Scrivener, whose ancestor, as the playwright has it, got his Skull
cracked by John of Gaunt for crowding among the Marshalmen in the Tilt
Yard, but must pertly Wink an