ide
for in the Hospital, that it's more likely the Officers and Soldiers
now there will be turn'd out to make Place for them, than any other
will be admitted. If you have Interest to get a Number of these
_Bable-Cypherians_ to back your Petition, which you may get, if you
can bribe and cajole the Attendants of their _Squabbaws_, or their
own Valets, it's possible you may succeed in your Pretensions.

"I'll sooner, _said he_, starve, than be guilty of so great a
Condescension, or more properly, so mean an Action." This he said with
some Warmth, and I replied as coolly, it was in his own Option. "I find
then, _said the Colonel_, you won't serve me."

I have, _said I_, given you Reasons which prove this Way I cannot:
But if giving your Petition and Certificates to the Emperor will be
of use, I'll venture to do it for you.

"The Emperor, _replied he_, is a good Prince, but has little Interest
with the Minister; and to hope any thing, but thro' his Canal, is
altogether vain." Saying this, he took his Leave in a very courteous
manner. The Minister was inform'd, that I had entertain'd a long
Discourse with this Officer, and ask'd me the Subject of it. I told him
what he desired, but that I declined troubling his Excellency with such
Trifles.

"These Fowls, _said he_, who build on their own Merit, are extremely
impertinent. The Colonel now in Question is one of your Fowls who
might by his Principles have made a Fortune, had he lived Two or
Three Hundred Years ago; but they are now obsolete, and he starves
by tenaciously practising his musty Morals. Why, he'll have the
Impudence to be always speaking Truth; and tho' he has been thrust
out of the Palace for this Vice more than once, he is not to be
corrected. He will tell a Fowl of Quality without Ceremony, that
he's a Pimp, and was raised by the Hens of his Family: He'll make no
Bones of telling another, if his Prudence made him decline Danger,
that he's a Coward: A Third he'll impudently remind of his former
Livery, tho' his good Fortune has raised him to the Title of a
Grandee. Nay, he had the Face to tell me, upon my refusing to take
his Petition, That it was great Pity, when I was imprisoned for
Peculation, that the Justice of the Nation did not first purge, and
then hang me; that I was a publick Robber, and deserv'd the Gallows
more richly than a common Thief. His Poverty and Folly made me pity
and pardon him, if le