justice of
the peace ever thought proper to commit a naked beggar for trial, I must
still have waited about two hundred and seventeen days before my
innocence could be cleared. So imperfect are the effects of the boasted
laws of a country, whose legislators hold their assembly from four to
six months in every year! I could never discover with certainty, whether
this delay were owing to any interference on the part of my prosecutor,
or whether it fell out in the regular administration of justice, which
is too solemn and dignified to accommodate itself to the rights or
benefit of an insignificant individual.

But this was not the only incident that occurred to me during my
confinement, for which I could find no satisfactory solution. It was
nearly at the same time, that the keeper began to alter his behaviour to
me. He sent for me one morning into the part of the building which was
appropriated for his own use, and, after some hesitation, told me he was
sorry my accommodations had been so indifferent, and asked whether I
should like to have a chamber in his family? I was struck with the
unexpectedness of this question, and desired to know whether any body
had employed him to ask it. No, he replied; but, now the assizes were
over, he had fewer felons on his hands, and more time to look about him.
He believed I was a good kind of a young man, and he had taken a sort of
a liking to me. I fixed my eye upon his countenance as he said this. I
could discover none of the usual symptoms of kindness; he appeared to me
to be acting a part, unnatural, and that sat with awkwardness upon him.
He went on however to offer me the liberty of eating at his table;
which, if I chose it, he said, would make no difference to him, and he
should not think of charging me any thing for it. He had always indeed
as much upon his hands as one person could see to; but his wife and his
daughter Peggy would be woundily pleased to hear a person of learning
talk, as he understood I was; and perhaps I might not feel myself
unpleasantly circumstanced in their company.

I reflected on this proposal, and had little doubt, notwithstanding what
the keeper had affirmed to the contrary, that it did not proceed from
any spontaneous humanity in him, but that he had, to speak the language
of persons of his cast, good reasons for what he did. I busied myself in
conjectures as to who could be the author of this sort of indulgence and
attention. The two most likely per