As to the particulars of the person’s life we are now speaking of, they will be sufficient to warn those who are so unhappy as to suffer from the ill-usage of their parents not to fall into courses of so base a nature, but rather to try every honest method to submit rather than commit dishonest acts, thereby justifying all the ill-treatment they have received, and by their own follies blot out the remembrance of their cruel parents’ crimes.  For though it sometimes happens that they are reduced to necessities which force them, in a manner, on what brings them to disgrace, yet the ill-natured world will charge all upon themselves, or at most will spare their pity till it comes too late; and when the poor wretch is dead will add to their reflections on him, as harsh ones as on those from whom he is descended.

Robert Perkins was the son of a very considerable innkeeper, in or near Hempsted, in Hertfordshire, who during the life-time of his wife treated him with great tenderness and seeming affection, sending him to school to a person in a neighbouring village, who was very considerable for his art of teaching, and professing his settled resolution to give his son Bob a very good education.

But no sooner had death snatched away the poor woman by whom Mr. Perkins had our unhappy Robin, then his father began to change his measures.  First of all the unfortunate lad experienced the miseries that flow from the careless management of a widower, who forgetting all obligations to his deceased wife, thought of nothing but diverting himself, and getting a new helpmate.  But Robin continued not long in this state; his hardships were quickly increased by the second marriage of his father, upon which he was fetched home and treated with some kindness at first.  But in a little time perceiving how things were going, and perhaps expressing his suspicions too freely, his mother-in-law soon prevailed to have him turned out, and absolutely forbidden his father’s house, the ready way to force a naked uninstructed youth on the most sinful courses.  Whether Robin at that time did anything dishonest is not certain, but being grievously pinched with cold one night, and troubled also with dismal apprehensions of what might come to his sister, he got a ladder and by the help of it climbed in at his mother’s window.  This was immediately exaggerated into a design of cutting her throat, and poor Bob was thereupon utterly discarded.

A short time after this, old Mr. Perkins died and left a fortune of several thousand pounds behind him, for which the poor young man was never a groat the better, being bound out ’prentice to a baker, and left, as to everything else, to the wide world.  His inclination, joined to the rambling life which he had hitherto led, induced him to mind the vulgar pleasures of drinking, gaming, and idling about much more than his business, which to him appeared very laborious.  There are everywhere companions enough to be met with who are ready to teach ignorant youths