All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment, shall be under the article of White’s Chocolate-house;[57] poetry, under that of Will’s Coffee-house;[58] learning, under the title of Grecian;[59] foreign and domestic news, you will have from St. James’s Coffee-house;[60] and what else I shall on any other subject offer, shall be dated from my own apartment.

I once more desire my readers to consider that as I cannot keep an ingenious man to go daily to Will’s under twopence each day merely for his charges,[61] to White’s under sixpence, nor to the Grecian without allowing him some plain Spanish,[62] to be as able as others at the learned table; and that a good observer cannot speak with even Kidney[63] at St. James’s without clean linen; I say, these considerations will, I hope, make all persons willing to comply with my humble request (when my gratis stock is exhausted) of a penny a piece; especially since they are sure of some proper amusement, and that it is impossible for me to want means to entertain them, having, besides the helps of my own parts, the power of divination, and that I can, by casting a figure, tell you all that will happen before it comes to pass.

But this last faculty I shall use very sparingly, and not speak of anything until it is passed, for fear of divulging matters which may offend our superiors.[64]

White’s Chocolate-house, April 11.

The deplorable condition of a very pretty gentleman, who walks here at the hours when men of quality first appear, is what is very much lamented.  His history is, that on the 9th of September, 1705, being in his one and twentieth year, he was washing his teeth at a tavern window in Pall Mall, when a fine equipage passed by, and in it a young lady, who looked up at him; away goes the coach, and the young gentleman pulled off his nightcap, and instead of rubbing his gums, as he ought to do out of the window till about four o’clock, he sits him down, and spoke not a word till twelve at night; after which, he began to inquire, if anybody knew the lady.  The company asked, “What lady?” But he said no more until they broke up at six in the morning.  All the ensuing winter he went from church to church every Sunday, and from play-house to play-house all the week, but could never find the original of the picture which dwelt in his bosom.  In a word, his attention to anything but his passion, was utterly gone.  He has lost all the money he ever played for, and been confuted in every argument he has entered upon since the moment he first saw her.  He is of a noble family, has naturally a very good air, and is of a frank, honest temper:  but this passion has so extremely mauled him, that his features are set and uninformed, and his whole visage is deadened by a long absence of thought.  He never appears in any alacrity, but when raised by wine; at which time he is sure to come hither, and throw away a great deal of wit on fellows, who have no sense further than just to observe, that our poor lover has most understanding when he is drunk, and is least in his senses when he is sober.[65]