n what manner I had directed that affair; I must
go on a little with that part, in order to bring the subsequent parts of
my story together.

My boy, the only son I had left that I had a legal right to call "son,"
was, as I have said, rescued from the unhappy circumstances of being
apprentice to a mechanic, and was brought up upon a new foot; but though
this was infinitely to his advantage, yet it put him back near three
years in his coming into this world; for he had been near a year at the
drudgery he was first put to, and it took up two years more to form him
for what he had hopes given him he should hereafter be, so that he was
full nineteen years old, or rather twenty years, before he came to be
put out as I intended; at the end of which time I put him to a very
flourishing Italian merchant, and he again sent him to Messina, in the
island of Sicily; and a little before the juncture I am now speaking of
I had letters from him--that is to say, Mrs. Amy had letters from him,
intimating that he was out of his time, and that he had an opportunity
to be taken into an English house there, on very good terms, if his
support from hence might answer what he was bid to hope for; and so
begged that what would be done for him might be so ordered that he might
have it for his present advancement, referring for the particulars to
his master, the merchant in London, who he had been put apprentice to
here; who, to cut the story short, gave such a satisfactory account of
it, and of my young man, to my steady and faithful counsellor, Sir
Robert Clayton, that I made no scruple to pay L4000, which was L1000
more than he demanded, or rather proposed, that he might have
encouragement to enter into the world better than he expected.

His master remitted the money very faithfully to him; and finding, by
Sir Robert Clayton, that the young gentleman--for so he called him--was
well supported, wrote such letters on his account as gave him a credit
at Messina equal in value to the money itself.

I could not digest it very well that I should all this while conceal
myself thus from my own child, and make all this favour due, in his
opinion, to a stranger; and yet I could not find in my heart to let my
son know what a mother he had, and what a life she lived; when, at the
same time that he must think himself infinitely obliged to me, he must
be obliged, if he was a man of virtue, to hate his mother, and abhor the
way of living by which all the b