A Narrative in Old Fashioned English.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

MINE OWN HOUSE.

I, JOHN DANGEROUS, a faithful subject of his Majesty King George, whose
bread, God bless him! I have eaten, and whose battles I have fought, in
my poor way, am now in my sixty-eighth year, and live in My Own House in
Hanover Square. By virtue of several commissions, both English and
foreign, I have a right to call myself Captain; and if any man say that
I have no such right, he Lies, and deserves the Stab. It may be that
this narrative, now composed only for my own Pleasure, will, long after
my Death, see the light in Print, and that some copper Captain, or
counterfeit critic, or pitiful creature of that kidney, will question my
Rank, or otherwise despitefully use my Memory. Let such treachours and
clapper-dudgeons (albeit I value not their leasing a bagadine) venture
it at their peril. I have, alas, no heirs male; but to my Daughter's
husband, and to his descendants, or, failing them, to their executors,
administrators, and assigns, I solemnly commit the task of seeking out
such envious Rogues, and of kicking and firking them on the basest part
of their base bodies. The stab I forego; I wish not to cheat the hangman
of his due, or the Rev. Mr. Villette of a sermon. But let the knaves
discover, to the aching of their scald sides, that even the Ghost of
John Dangerous is not to be libelled.

There is a knot of these same cittern-headed simpletons who meet at a
coffee-house in Great Swallow Street, which I am sometimes minded to
frequent, and who imagine that they show their wit and parts by reviling
their Church and their King, and even by maligning the Honourable East
India Company,--a corporation to which I am beholden for many Favours.
"Fellow," I said, only last Saturday, to a whippersnapper from an Inn of
Court,--a Thing I would not trust to defend my Tom-Cat were he in peril
at the Old Bailey for birdslaughter, and who picks up a wretched
livelihood, I am told, by scribbling lampoons against his betters in a
weekly Review,--"Fellow," I said, "were I twenty years younger, and you
twenty years older, John Dangerous would vouchsafe to pink an
eyelet-hole in your waistcoat. Did I care to dabble in your polite
conversation or your _belles lettres_ (of which I knew much more than
ever you will know years before the Parish was at pains to fix your
begetting on some one), I would answer your scurrilities in Print; but
this I disdain