ad supplied. His shop was often visited
in a morning by ladies who left their coaches in the next street, and
crept through the alley in linen gowns. Drugget knows the rank of his
customers by their bashfulness; and, when he finds them unwilling to be
seen, invites them up stairs, or retires with them to the back window.

I rejoiced at the increasing prosperity of my friend, and imagined that,
as he grew rich, he was growing happy. His mind has partaken the
enlargement of his fortune. When I stepped in for the first five years,
I was welcomed only with a shake of the hand; in the next period of his
life, he beckoned across the way for a pot of beer; but for six years
past, he invites me to dinner; and, if he bespeaks me the day before,
never fails to regale me with a fillet of veal.

His riches neither made him uncivil nor negligent; he rose at the same
hour, attended with the same assiduity, and bowed with the same
gentleness. But for some years he has been much inclined to talk of the
fatigues of business, and the confinement of a shop, and to wish that he
had been so happy as to have renewed his uncle's lease of a farm, that
he might have lived without noise and hurry, in a pure air, in the
artless society of honest villagers, and the contemplation of the works
of nature.

I soon discovered the cause of my friend's philosophy. He thought
himself grown rich enough to have a lodging in the country, like the
mercers on Ludgate-hill, and was resolved to enjoy himself in the
decline of life. This was a revolution not to be made suddenly. He
talked three years of the pleasures of the country, but passed every
night over his own shop. But at last he resolved to be happy, and hired
a lodging in the country, that he may steal some hours in the week from
business; for, says he, _when a man advances in life, he loves to
entertain himself sometimes with his own thoughts._

I was invited to this seat of quiet and contemplation, among those whom
Mr. Drugget considers as his most reputable friends, and desires to make
the first witnesses of his elevation to the highest dignities of a
shopkeeper. I found him at Islington, in a room which overlooked the
high road, amusing himself with looking through the window, which the
clouds of dust would not suffer him to open. He embraced me, told me I
was welcome into the country, and asked me if I did not feel myself
refreshed. He then desired that dinner might be hastened, for fresh air