bad reputation into his house,
there was not a tradesman of any credit to be found who would venture
to take him as an apprentice, though a large premium was offered for
that purpose. His parents, therefore, were under the disagreeable
necessity of keeping him at home; but having little or nothing for him
to do, he soon fell into bad company, who in as short a time gave him a
perfect relish for the scandalous and expensive amusement of gaming and
tippling. His finances, though sufficiently plentiful for a youth of
his age, were by these destructive means so much encumbered with little
debts, that to maintain a worthless credit among his worthless
companions, he formed the wicked resolution of taking money from his
father and mother without their knowledge. The success of his first
attempt (in which he was not discovered, because he was not suspected
to be capable of so much baseness) encouraged him to a second; and the
success of his second attempt encouraged him to greater extravagances
and more expensive risk than he had ventured upon before. But his
wickedness, which in the former instances had been wrongfully charged
upon the servants of the family, being at last detected, and his
parents taking him very severely to task on account of such an
abandoned and depraved conduct, he left them in a fit of anger and
remorse, and became a thoughtless and unhappy wanderer; in this
situation falling one evening into a company whose mirth and gaiety
greatly delighted him, and whose genteel appearance led him to suppose
they were gentlemen, though in reality they were no other than
highwaymen, he was prevailed on in an unguarded moment, when heated
with liquor, to make an incursion with this infamous banditti, and
actually stopped a gentleman and demanded his money; fortunately,
however for this unhappy youth, the gentleman was an old school fellow,
and making himself known to him, with much intreaty prevailed on him
immediately to leave the company of those desperate adventurers, and
totally to abandon a mode of life so shockingly wicked in itself, and
so dreadfully fatal in its consequences.

"But from the idle and dissipated manner in which he had spent his
time, he had contracted an unconquerable habit of indolence, and a
rooted aversion to business; in this frame of mind, the army became his
last resource, into which he entered as a common soldier, but after a
short time his itch for pilfering returning, he could not refra