ing the following
epitaph, upon a fly being caught in a spider's web:--

"Here lies the body of John Crow,
Who once was high, but now is low;
Ye brother Crows take warning all,
For as you rise, so you must fall."

At the age of thirteen, after receiving a moderate education in reading,
writing, and arithmetic, Paine left school, to follow his father's
trade (stay-making.) Although disliking the business, he pursued
this avocation for nearly five years. When about twenty years of age,
however, he felt--as most enterprising young men do feel--a desire
to visit London, and enter into the competition and chances of a
metropolitan life. His natural dislike to his father's business led him
to abandon for a period his original occupation, and, after working some
time with Mr. Morris, a noted stay-maker, in Long Acre, he resolved upon
a seafaring adventure, of which he thus speaks:--

"At an early age, raw, adventurous, and heated with the false Heroism
of a master [Rev. Mr. Knowles, Master of the Grammar School at Thetford]
who had served in a man-of-war, I began my fortune, and entered on board
the Terrible, Captain Death, from this adventure I was happily prevented
by the affectionate and moral remonstrances of a good father, who from
the habits of his life, being of the Quaker profession, looked on me as
lost; but the impression, much as it affected me at the time, wore
away, and I entered afterwards in the King of Prussia privateer, Captain
Mender, and went with her to sea."

Sea life did not, as may be supposed, long satisfy a mind like Paine's.
In April, 1759, after working nearly twelve months at Dover, we find
him settled as master stay-maker at Sandwich; marrying, on September
27, Mary Lambert, daughter of an Exciseman of that place. But his
matrimonial happiness was of short duration, his wife dying the
following year.

Disgusted with the toil and inconvenience of his late occupation,
Paine now renounced it forever, to apply himself to the profession of
Exciseman. After fourteen months' study he obtained the appointment of
supernumerary in the Excise, which he held, with intervals, till 1768,
when he settled as Exciseman at Lewes, in Sussex, and married, 1771,
Elizabeth Olive, daughter of a tobacconist, whose business he succeeded
to. About this time Paine wrote several little pieces, in prose and
verse, among which was the celebrated song on the "Death of General
Wolfe," and "The Trial of