be accounted for; since it
appears more likely to produce in him ideas of a different kind. Some
men, perhaps, are no more sincere in the contempt for it which they
express than others in their contempt of money in general; and I am the
rather inclined to this persuasion, as I have seldom heard of either
who have refused or refunded this their despised object. Besides, it is
sometimes impossible to believe these professions, as every action of
the man's life is a contradiction to it. Who can believe a tradesman who
says he would not tell his name for the profit he gets by the selling
such a parcel of goods, when he hath told a thousand lies in order to
get it? Pitiful, indeed, is often applied to an object not absolutely,
but comparatively with our expectations, or with a greater object: in
which sense it is not easy to set any bounds to the use of the word.
Thus, a handful of halfpence daily appear pitiful to a porter, and a
handful of silver to a drawer. The latter, I am convinced, at a polite
tavern, will not tell his name (for he will not give you any answer)
under the price of gold. And in this sense thirty pound may be accounted
pitiful by the lowest mechanic.

One difficulty only seems to occur, and that is this: how comes it that,
if the profits of the meanest arts are so considerable, the professors
of them are not richer than we generally see them? One answer to this
shall suffice. Men do not become rich by what they get, but by what they
keep. He who is worth no more than his annual wages or salary, spends
the whole; he will be always a beggar let his income be what it will,
and so will be his family when he dies. This we see daily to be the case
of ecclesiastics, who, during their lives, are extremely well provided
for, only because they desire to maintain the honor of the cloth by
living like gentlemen, which would, perhaps, be better maintained by
living unlike them.

But, to return from so long a digression, to which the use of so
improper an epithet gave occasion, and to which the novelty of the
subject allured, I will make the reader amends by concisely telling
him that the captain poured forth such a torrent of abuse that I very
hastily and very foolishly resolved to quit the ship.

I gave immediate orders to summon a hoy to carry me that evening to
Dartmouth, without considering any consequence. Those orders I gave in
no very low voice, so that those above stairs might possibly conceive
there was m