near which I lay down and slept till evening, being
afraid to travel in the day-time. At dark I arose, and made my
way towards South Carolina, walking the whole night, and by
morning was thirty miles from where I started. My greatest
difficulty was having no hat. Coming, however, to a river, I
saw a bridge that crossed it a little below me. I went on it,
and stood leaning over its wall, till I saw a traveller coming
the other way. As soon as he approached me, I told him, with
much concern, that I had met with bad luck; for I had just been
looking over the wall when my hat fell off, and went rapidly
down the stream, the sides of which were so dangerous I could
not possibly get it again:--would he be so kind as to tell me
where I could buy another? He told me he would conduct me to a
store; I went with him and purchased one."

The life of a thief is one of perpetual anxiety, yet with many it
becomes a sort of passion. The earnings of honest industry, even when
sufficient to keep them in comfort, are not sufficient to keep them
satisfied. The recollection of dangers escaped, the chance of similar
fortune again, the prurience of activity,--all urge to a renewal of
their lawless pursuits; and as a thoroughbred sportsman despises the
practice of catching game by snares, deeming it unworthy of a skilful
marksman, so, we suspect, do thieves regard the reward of industry, when
compared with the booty of a dangerous encounter. In Vaux's Memoirs we
find much to lead us to this conclusion. Several times was he well
settled in the way of obtaining, not only an honest livelihood, but of
participating in elegancies, luxuries, and agreeable society. Still, as
if impelled by destiny, he continually risked the loss of all, to
gratify his bad propensity. Ward, on the contrary, had been perpetually
unfortunate in realizing his visionary hopes; he was entreated by his
wife to forsake his evil courses; but it was all in vain. "Resorting
occasionally," he says, "to the company of some adepts in crime, _it
seemed to afford me pleasure_." And in the narratives of the other two,
we find evident delight manifested at the success of a hazardous,
fraudulent undertaking, while the guilt of the action, and the pain and
misery it may have occasioned, are overlooked or lightly regarded, just
as a military hero, exulting in a victory, laments the loss of neither
friends nor foes. Human ha