carce sufficient to answer his pocket
expenses, which now increased in proportion to the decrease of business,
for, as he had more idle time, and was less admitted into private
families, so he thought he had more occasion to enlarge his acquaintance
among his own sex, who alone were able to support him in his disgrace
with the other. He accordingly listed himself in several clubs, and
endeavoured to monopolise the venereal branch of trade, though this was
but an indifferent resource, for almost all his patients of this class
were such as either could not, or would not, properly recompense the
physician.

For some time he lingered in this situation, without going upwards or
downwards, floating like a wisp of straw at the turning of the tide,
until he could no longer amuse the person of whom he had hired his
coach-horses, or postpone the other demands, which multiplied upon him
every day. Then was his chariot overturned with a hideous crash, and his
face so much wounded with the shivers of the glass, which went to pieces
in the fall, that he appeared in the coffee-house with half a dozen black
patches upon his countenance, gave a most circumstantial detail of the
risk he had run, and declared, that he did not believe he should ever
hazard himself again in any sort of wheel carriage.

Soon after this accident, he took an opportunity of telling his friends,
in the same public place, that he had turned away his footman on account
of his drunkenness, and was resolved, for the future, to keep none but
maids in his service, because the menservants are generally impudent,
lazy, debauched, or dishonest; and after all, neither so neat, handy, or
agreeable as the other sex. In the rear of this resolution, he shifted
his lodgings into a private court, being distracted with the din of
carriages, that disturb the inhabitants who live towards the open street;
and gave his acquaintance to understand, that he had a medical work upon
the anvil, which he could not finish without being indulged in silence
and tranquillity. In effect, he gradually put on the exteriors of an
author. His watch, with an horizontal movement by Graham, which he had
often mentioned, and shown as a very curious piece of workmanship, began,
about this time, to be very much out of order, and was committed to the
care of a mender, who was in no hurry to restore it. His tie-wig
degenerated into a major; he sometimes appeared without a sword, and was
even observe