be weak enough to interest themselves in your quarrels, and to prefer one pack to the other, while both are aiming at their purses, it is your business to laugh at, not imitate their folly.  What can be more ridiculous than for gentlemen to quarrel about hats, when there is not one among you whose hat is worth a farthing?  What is the use of a hat farther than to keep the head warm, or to hide a bald crown from the public?  It is the mark of a gentleman to move his hat on every occasion; and in courts and noble assemblies no man ever wears one.  Let me hear no more therefore of this childish disagreement, but all toss up your hats together with one accord, and consider that hat as the best, which will contain the largest booty.”  He thus ended his speech, which was followed by a murmuring applause, and immediately all present tossed their hats together as he had commanded them.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHEWING the consequence which attended Heartfree’s adventures with
wild; all natural and common enough to little wretches who deal
with great men; together with some precedents of letters, being
the different methods of answering A dun.

Let us now return to Heartfree, to whom the count’s note, which he had paid away, was returned, with an account that the drawer was not to be found, and that, on enquiring after him, they had heard he had run away, and consequently the money was now demanded of the endorser.  The apprehension of such a loss would have affected any man of business, but much more one whose unavoidable ruin it must prove.  He expressed so much concern and confusion on this occasion, that the proprietor of the note was frightened, and resolved to lose no time in securing what he could.  So that in the afternoon of the same day Mr. Snap was commissioned to pay Heartfree a visit, which he did with his usual formality, and conveyed him to his own house.

Mrs. Heartfree was no sooner informed of what had happened to her husband than she raved like one distracted; but after she had vented the first agonies of her passion in tears and lamentations she applied herself to all possible means to procure her husband’s liberty.  She hastened to beg her neighbours to secure bail for him.  But, as the news had arrived at their houses before her, she found none of them at home, except an honest Quaker, whose servants durst not tell a lie.  However, she succeeded no better with him, for unluckily he had made an affirmation the day before that he would never be bail for any man.  After many fruitless efforts of this kind she repaired to her husband, to comfort him at least with her presence.  She found him sealing the last of several letters, which he was despatching to his