ll as met with cross events from
some unseen hand, which have disappointed his best laid designs. Such
accidents arrive from the interventions of aerial beings, as they are
benevolent or hurtful to the nature of man, and attend his steps in the
tracts of ambition, of business, and of pleasure. Before I ever appeared
to you in the manner I do now, I have frequently followed you in your
evening walks, and have often, by throwing some accident in your way, as
the passing by of a funeral, or the appearance of some other solemn
object, given your imagination a new turn, and changed a night you had
destined to mirth and jollity, into an exercise of study and
contemplation. I was the old soldier who met you last summer in Chelsea
Fields, and pretended that I had broken my wooden leg, and could not get
home; but I snapped it short off on purpose, that you might fall into
the reflections you did on that subject, and take me into your hack. If
you remember, you made yourself very merry on that fracture, and asked
me, whether I thought I should next winter feel cold in the toes of that
leg? As is usually observed, that those who lose limbs, are sensible of
pains in the extreme parts, even after those limbs are cut off. However,
my keeping you then in the story of the battle of the Boyne, prevented
an assignation, which would have led you into more disasters than I then
related.

"To be short; those two persons you see yonder, are such as I am; they
are not real men, but are mere shades and figures: one is named Alethes;
the other, Verisimilis. Their office is to be the guardians and
representatives of Conscience and Honour. They are now going to visit
the several parts of the town, to see how their interests in the world
decay or flourish, and to purge themselves from the many false
imputations they daily meet with in the commerce and conversation of
men. You observed Verisimilis frowned when he first saw me. What he is
provoked at, is, that I told him one day, though he strutted and dressed
with so much ostentation, if he kept himself within his own bounds, he
was but a lackey, and wore only that gentleman's livery whom he is now
with. This frets him to the heart; for you must know, he has pretended a
long time to set up for himself, and gets among a crowd of the more
unthinking part of mankind, who take him for a person of the first
quality; though his introduction into the world was wholly owing to his
present companion."

Th