sees one at play cheat, he has a right to come in for snares, for knowing the mysteries of the game.  This is a very wise and just maxim; and if I have not left at Mr. Morphew’s, directed to me, bank bills for L200 on or before this day sevennight, I shall tell how Tom Cash got his estate.  I expect three hundred pounds of Mr. Soilett, for concealing all the money he has lent to himself, and his landed friend bound with him, at thirty per cent. at his scrivener’s.  Absolute princes make people pay what they please in deference to their power:  I do not know why I should not do the same, out of fear or respect to my knowledge.  I always preserve decorums and civilities to the fair sex:  therefore if a certain lady, who left her coach at the New Exchange[285] door in the Strand, and whipped down Durham Yard into a boat with a young gentleman for Fox Hall;[286] I say, if she will send me word, that I may give the fan which she dropped, and I found, to my sister Jenny, there shall be no more said of it.  I expect hush-money to be regularly sent for every folly or vice any one commits in this whole town; and hope I may pretend to deserve it better than a chamber-maid, or valet-de-chambre:  they only whisper it to the little set of their companions; but I can tell it to all men living, or who are to live.  Therefore I desire all my readers to pay their fines, or mend their lives.

White’s Chocolate-house, June 8.

My familiar being come from France, with an answer to my letter to Lewis of that kingdom, instead of going on in a discourse of what he had seen in that Court, he put on the immediate concern of a guardian, and fell to inquiring into my thoughts and adventures since his journey.  As short as his stay had been, I confessed I had had many occasions for his assistance in my conduct; but communicated to him my thoughts of putting all my force against the horrid and senseless custom of duels.  “If it were possible,” said he, “to laugh at things in themselves so deeply tragical as the impertinent profusion of human life, I think I could divert you with a figure I saw just after my death, when the philosopher threw me, as I told you some days ago, into the pail of water.[287] You are to know, that when men leave the body, there are receptacles for them as soon as they depart, according to the manner in which they lived and died.  At the very instant that I was killed, there came away with me a spirit which had lost its body in a duel.  We were both examined.  Me, the whole assembly looked at with kindness and pity, but at the same time with an air of welcome, and consolation:  they pronounced me very happy, who had died in innocence; and told me, a quite different place was allotted to me, than that which was appointed for my companion; there being a great distance from the mansions of fools and innocents:  ‘though at the same time,’ said one of the ghosts, there is a great affinity between an idiot who has been so for long life, and