Tom.  Brown to his Friends among the Living.

Gentlemen,

I bear it with no little concern to find myself so soon forgot among ye; I have paid as constant attendance to post-hours, in expectation to hear from ye, as a hungry Irish Man (at twelve) to a three-penny ordinary, or a decayed beau for nice eating to a roasting-cock’s.  No amorous-keeping fool, banished from his Chloris in town, to his country solitude, has waited with greater impatience for a kind epistle from her, than I for one from you.  I have searched all private packets, and examined every straggling ghost that came from your parts, without being able to get the least intelligence of your affairs.  This is the third since my arrival in these gloomy regions, and I can give myself no reason why I have received none in answer, unless the packet-boat has been taken by the French, or that so little time has quite excluded me from your memories.  In my first I gave you an account of my journey hither, and my reception among the ingenious in these gloomy regions.

I arrived on the Banks of Acheron, and found Charon scooping his wherry, who seeing me approach him, bid me sit down a little, for he had been hard worked lately, and could not go with a single passenger:  I was willing enough to embrace the proposal, being much fatigued and weary.  Having finished what he was about, he cast his rueful aspect up to the clouds, and demonstrating from thence (as I suppose) it was near dinner-time, he took from out a locker or cupboard in the stern of his pinnace, some provender pinned up in a clean linnen clout, and a jack of liquor, and fell too without the least shew of ceremony, unless indeed it were to offer me the civility of partaking with him.  He muttered something to himself, which might be grace as far as I know; but if it were, ’twas as short as that at an Auction-dinner, nor did he devour what was before him with less application than I have seen some there.  For my part, I could not but contemplate on his shaggy locks, his wither’d sun-burnt countenance, together with the mightiness and sanctity of his beard; but above all, his brawny chopt knuckles employed my attention:  In short, having satisfied the cormorant in his guts, he had time to ask me what country-man I was? to which I submissively answered, an English-man:  O, says he, those English-men are merry rogues, and love mischief; I have sometimes a diverting story from thence:  What news have you brought with you? truly I told his highness I came away a little dissatisfied, and had not made any remarks on the world for some time before my death; and for news I had not leisure to bring any thing of moment.  But ere we had talked much more, we saw two other passengers approach us, who, by their often turning to one another, and their laying down arguments with their hands, seemed to be in warm debate together; which was as we conjectured; for when they drew nearer to us, they proved to be a termagant High-Flyer,