is true I have had no education, but I might have laboured hard and lived well for all that; but gaming and ill-company were my ruin.  The Law hath justly brought me where I am, and I hope such young men as see my untimely fate will avoid the paths which lead unto it.  Good people, pray for our departing souls, as we do, that God may give you all more grace than to follow us thither. He suffered with the malefactors before-mentioned, being at the time of his execution between seventeen and eighteen years old.

The Life of THOMAS SMITH, a Highwayman

There is a certain commendable tenderness in human nature towards all who are under misfortunes, and this tenderness is in proportion to the magnitude of those evils which we suppose the pitied person to labour under.  If we extend our compassion to relieving their necessities, and feeling a regret for those miseries which they undergo, we undoubtedly discharge the duties of humanity according to the scheme both of natural religion and the laws laid down in the Gospel.  Perhaps no object ever merited it from juster motives than this poor man, who is the subject of the following pages.  His parents were people in tolerable circumstances in Southwark; his father was snatched from him by death, while he was yet a child, but his mother, as far as she was able, was very careful that he should not pass his younger days without instruction, and an uncle he then had, being pleased with the docile temper of the youth, was at some expense also about his education.  By this means he came to read and write tolerably well, and gained some little knowledge of the Latin tongue; and having a peculiar sweetness in his behaviour, it won very much upon his relations, and encouraged them to treat him with great indulgence.

But unfortunately for him, by the time he grew big enough to go out apprentice, or to enter upon any other method of living, his friends suddenly dropped off, and, by their death becoming in great want of money, he was forced to resign all the golden hopes he had formed and for the sake of present subsistance submit to becoming footman to a gentleman, who was, however, a very good and kind master to him, till in about a year’s time he died also, and poor Smith was again left at his wits’ end.  However, out of this trouble he was relieved by an Irish gentleman, who took him into his service, and carried him over with him to Dublin.  There he met with abundance of temptations to fall into that loose and lascivious course of life which prevails more in that city, perhaps, than in any other in Europe.  But he had so much grace at that time as to resist it, and after a stay there of twenty months, returned into England again, where he came into the service of a third master, no less indulgent to him than the two former had been.  In this last service an odd accident befell him, in which, though I neither believe myself, nor incline to impose on my readers that there was anything supernatural in the case of it, yet I fancy the oddness of the thing may, under the story I am going to tell, prove not disagreeable.