ne at play cheat, he has a right to
come in for snares, for knowing the mysteries of the game. This is a
very wise and just maxim; and if I have not left at Mr. Morphew's,
directed to me, bank bills for L200 on or before this day sevennight, I
shall tell how Tom Cash got his estate. I expect three hundred pounds of
Mr. Soilett, for concealing all the money he has lent to himself, and
his landed friend bound with him, at thirty per cent. at his
scrivener's. Absolute princes make people pay what they please in
deference to their power: I do not know why I should not do the same,
out of fear or respect to my knowledge. I always preserve decorums and
civilities to the fair sex: therefore if a certain lady, who left her
coach at the New Exchange[285] door in the Strand, and whipped down
Durham Yard into a boat with a young gentleman for Fox Hall;[286] I say,
if she will send me word, that I may give the fan which she dropped, and
I found, to my sister Jenny, there shall be no more said of it. I expect
hush-money to be regularly sent for every folly or vice any one commits
in this whole town; and hope I may pretend to deserve it better than a
chamber-maid, or _valet-de-chambre_: they only whisper it to the little
set of their companions; but I can tell it to all men living, or who are
to live. Therefore I desire all my readers to pay their fines, or mend
their lives.

White's Chocolate-house, June 8.

My familiar being come from France, with an answer to my letter to Lewis
of that kingdom, instead of going on in a discourse of what he had seen
in that Court, he put on the immediate concern of a guardian, and fell
to inquiring into my thoughts and adventures since his journey. As short
as his stay had been, I confessed I had had many occasions for his
assistance in my conduct; but communicated to him my thoughts of putting
all my force against the horrid and senseless custom of duels. "If it
were possible," said he, "to laugh at things in themselves so deeply
tragical as the impertinent profusion of human life, I think I could
divert you with a figure I saw just after my death, when the philosopher
threw me, as I told you some days ago, into the pail of water.[287] You
are to know, that when men leave the body, there are receptacles for
them as soon as they depart, according to the manner in which they lived
and died. At the very instant that I was killed, there came away with me
a spirit which had lost its body in a duel.