simple. A friend was arrested for fifty pounds; I was unable to
extricate him except by becoming his bail. When at liberty he fled
from his creditors, and left me to take his place: in prison I
expected greater satisfactions than I had enjoyed at large. I hoped to
converse with men in this new world simple and believing like myself;
but I found them as cunning and as cautious as those in the world I
had left behind. They spunged up my money while it lasted, borrowed my
coals and never paid for them, and cheated me when I played at
cribbage. All this was done because they believed me to be very
good-natured, and knew that I had no harm in me.

"Upon my first entrance into this mansion, which is to some the abode
of despair, I felt no sensations different from those I experienced
abroad. I was now on one side of the door, and those who were
unconfined were on the other; this was all the difference between us.
At first, indeed, I felt some uneasiness, in considering how I should
be able to provide this week for the wants of the week ensuing; but
after some time, if I found myself sure of eating one day, I never
troubled my head how I was to be supplied another. I seized every
precarious meal with the utmost good-humour; indulged no rants of
spleen at my situation; never called down Heaven and all the stars to
behold my dining upon an halfpenny-worth of radishes; my very
companions were taught to believe that I liked salad better than
mutton. I contented myself with thinking, that all my life I should
either eat white bread or brown; considered that all that happened was
best; laughed when I was not in pain, took the world as it went, and
read Tacitus often, for want of more books and company.

"How long I might have continued in this torpid state of simplicity I
cannot tell, had I not been roused by seeing an old acquaintance, whom
I knew to be a prudent blockhead, preferred to a place in the
government. I now found that I had pursued a wrong track, and that the
true way of being able to relieve others, was first to aim at
independence myself; my immediate care, therefore, was to leave my
present habitation, and make an entire reformation in my conduct and
behaviour. For a free, open, undesigning deportment, I put on that of
closeness, prudence, and economy. One of the most heroic actions I
ever performed, and for which I shall praise myself as long as I live,
was the refusing half a crown to an old acquaintance, at the