ps the
most careless passenger, who solicits admission as a favor, nay, often
purchases it. Just so will it fare with your little fabric, which at
present I fear has more of the Tuscan than of the Corinthian order.
You must absolutely change the whole front or nobody will knock at the
door. The several parts which must compose this new front are elegant,
easy, natural, superior good breeding; and an engaging address;
genteel motions; an insinuating softness in your looks, words, and
actions; a spruce, lively air, and fashionable dress; and all the
glitter that a young fellow should have.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: From the "Letters to His Son," _passim_. Chesterfield,
the man of affairs--and he had real distinction in the public life of
his time--is quite forgotten, but his letters, which he wrote for
private purposes and never dreamed would be published, have made him
one of the English literary immortals.]

[Footnote 17: From the "Letters to His Son."]

HENRY FIELDING

Born in 1707, died in 1754; son of Gen. Edmund Fielding;
admitted to the bar in 1740; made a justice of the peace in
1748; chairman of Quarter Sessions in 1749; published
"Joseph Andrews" in 1742, "Tom Jones" in 1749, and "Amelia"
in 1751; among other works wrote many plays and "A Journal
of a Voyage to Lisbon," which was published in 1755, after
his death which occurred in Lisbon.

I

TOM THE HERO ENTERS THE STAGE[18]

As we determined when we first sat down to write this history to
flatter no man, but to guide our pen throughout by the directions of
truth, we are obliged to bring our hero on the stage in a much more
disadvantageous manner than we could wish; and to declare honestly,
even at his first appearance, that it was the universal opinion of all
Mr. Allworthy's family that he was certainly born to be hanged.

Indeed, I am sorry to say there was too much reason for this
conjecture, the lad having from his earliest years discovered a
propensity to many vices, and especially to one, which hath as a
direct tendency as any other to that fate which we have just now
observed to have been prophetically denounced against him. He had been
already convicted of three robberies; viz., of robbing an orchard, of
stealing a duck out of a farmer's yard, and of picking Master
Blifil's pocket of a ball.

The vices of this young man were, moreover, heightened by the
disadvantageous light in which they