hn does not answer.
'What a plague! nobody there? What the devil, and rot me, John, for a
lazy dog as you are!' I knew no way to cure him but by writing down all
he said one morning as he was dressing, and laying it before him on the
toilet when he came to pick his teeth. The last recital I gave him of
what he said for half an hour before was, 'What, the devil! where is
the washball? call the chairmen! d--n them, I warrant they are at the
alehouse already! zounds! and confound them!' When he came to the glass
he takes up my note--'Ha! this fellow is worse than me: what, does he
swear with pen and ink?' But, reading on, he found them to be his
own words. The stratagem had so good an effect upon him that he grew
immediately a new man, and is learning to speak without an oath; which
makes him extremely short in his phrases; for, as I observed before,
a common swearer has a brain without any idea on the swearing side;
therefore my ward has yet mighty little to say, and is forced to
substitute some other vehicle of nonsense to supply the defect of his
usual expletives. When I left him, he made use of 'Odsbodikins! Oh
me! and Never stir alive!' and so forth; which gave me hopes of his
recovery. So I went to the next I told you of, the gamester. When we
first take our place about a man, the receptacles of the pericranium are
immediately searched. In his I found no one ordinary trace of thinking;
but strong passion, violent desires, and a continued series of different
changes had torn it to pieces. There appeared no middle condition;
the triumph of a prince, or the misery of a beggar, were his alternate
states. I was with him no longer than one day, which was yesterday. In
the morning at twelve we were worth four thousand pounds; at three, we
were arrived at six thousand; half an hour after, we were reduced to one
thousand; at four of the clock, we were down to two hundred; at five,
to fifty; at six, to five; at seven, to one guinea; the next bet to
nothing. This morning he borrowed half a crown of the maid who cleans
his shoes, and is now gaming in Lincoln's Inn Fields among the boys for
farthings and oranges, till he has made up three pieces, and then he
returns to White's into the best company in town."

Thus ended our first discourse; and it is hoped that you will forgive me
that I have picked so little out of my companion at our first interview.
In the next it is possible he may tell me more pleasing incidents; for
though