but I was a wild, idle boy, and eager for any
thing like enterprise or mischief. Well, Sir, it is now more than three
years ago since I first met one Tom Thornton; it was at a boxing match.
Tom was chosen chairman, at a sort of club of the farmers and yeomen;
and being a lively, amusing fellow, and accustomed to the company of
gentlemen, was a great favourite with all of us. He was very civil to
me, and I was quite pleased with his notice. I did not, however, see
much of him then, nor for more than two years afterwards; but some
months ago we met again. I was in very poor circumstances, so was he,
and this made us closer friends than we might otherwise have been. He
lived a great deal at the gambling-houses, and fancied he had discovered
a certain method of winning [Note: A very common delusion, both among
sharpers and their prey.] at hazard. So, whenever he could not find a
gentleman whom he could cheat with false dice, tricks at cards, he
would go into any hell to try his infallible game. I did not, however,
perceive, that he made a good livelihood by it; and though sometimes,
either by that method or some other, he had large sums of money in his
possession, yet they were spent as soon as acquired. The fact was, that
he was not a man who could ever grow rich; he was extremely extravagant
in all things--loved women and drinking, and was always striving to get
into the society of people above him. In order to do this, he affected
great carelessness of money; and if, at a race or a cock-fight, any real
gentlemen would go home with him, he would insist upon treating them to
the very best of every thing.

"Thus, Sir, he was always poor, and at his wit's end, for means to
supply his extravagance. He introduced me to three or four gentlemen, as
he called them, but whom I have since found to be markers, sharpers,
and black-legs; and this set soon dissipated the little honesty my own
habits of life had left me. They never spoke of things by their right
names; and, therefore, those things never seemed so bad as they really
were--to swindle a gentleman, did not sound a crime, when it was called
'macing a swell'--nor transportation a punishment, when it was termed,
with a laugh, 'lagging a cove.' Thus, insensibly, my ideas of right
and wrong, always obscure, became perfectly confused: and the habit of
treating all crimes as subjects of jest in familiar conversation, soon
made me regard them as matters of very trifling importance.