The Man of Feeling | Page 8

it, Mr. Harley. I told all my misfortunes truly, but they were
seldom believed; and the few who gave me a halfpenny as they passed
did it with a shake of the head, and an injunction not to trouble them
with a long story. In short, I found that people don't care to give alms
without some security for their money; a wooden leg or a withered arm
is a sort of draught upon heaven for those who choose to have their
money placed to account there; so I changed my plan, and, instead of
telling my own misfortunes, began to prophesy happiness to others.
This I found by much the better way: folks will always listen when the
tale is their own, and of many who say they do not believe in
fortune-telling, I have known few on whom it had not a very sensible
effect. I pick up the names of their acquaintance; amours and little
squabbles are easily gleaned among servants and neighbours; and
indeed people themselves are the best intelligencers in the world for our
purpose: they dare not puzzle us for their own sakes, for every one is
anxious to hear what they wish to believe, and they who repeat it, to
laugh at it when they have done, are generally more serious than their
hearers are apt to imagine. With a tolerable good memory, and some
share of cunning, with the help of walking a-nights over heaths and
church-yards, with this, and showing the tricks of that there dog, whom
I stole from the serjeant of a marching regiment (and by the way, he
can steal too upon occasion), I make shift to pick up a livelihood. My
trade, indeed, is none of the honestest; yet people are not much cheated
neither who give a few half-pence for a prospect of happiness, which I
have heard some persons say is all a man can arrive at in this world.
But I must bid you good day, sir, for I have three miles to walk before
noon, to inform some boarding-school young ladies whether their
husbands are to be peers of the realm or captains in the army: a
question which I promised to answer them by that time."
Harley had drawn a shilling from his pocket; but Virtue bade him
consider on whom he was going to bestow it. Virtue held back his arm;

but a milder form, a younger sister of Virtue's, not so severe as Virtue,
nor so serious as Pity, smiled upon him; his fingers lost their
compression, nor did Virtue offer to catch the money as it fell. It had no
sooner reached the ground than the watchful cur (a trick he had been
taught) snapped it up, and, contrary to the most approved method of
stewardship, delivered it immediately into the hands of his master.

CHAPTER XIX
--HE MAKES A SECOND EXPEDITION TO THE BARONET'S.
THE LAUDABLE AMBITION OF A YOUNG MAN TO BE
THOUGHT SOMETHING BY THE WORLD

We have related, in a former chapter, the little success of his first visit
to the great man, for whom he had the introductory letter from Mr.
Walton. To people of equal sensibility, the influence of those trifles we
mentioned on his deportment will not appear surprising, but to his
friends in the country they could not be stated, nor would they have
allowed them any place in the account. In some of their letters,
therefore, which he received soon after, they expressed their surprise at
his not having been more urgent in his application, and again
recommended the blushless assiduity of successful merit.
He resolved to make another attempt at the baronet's; fortified with
higher notions of his own dignity, and with less apprehension of
repulse. In his way to Grosvenor Square he began to ruminate on the
folly of mankind, who affixed those ideas of superiority to riches,
which reduced the minds of men, by nature equal with the more
fortunate, to that sort of servility which he felt in his own. By the time
he had reached the Square, and was walking along the pavement which
led to the baronet's, he had brought his reasoning on the subject to such
a point, that the conclusion, by every rule of logic, should have led him
to a thorough indifference in his approaches to a fellow-mortal, whether
that fellow-mortal was possessed of six or six thousand pounds a year.
It is probable, however, that the premises had been improperly formed:
for it is certain, that when he approached the great man's door he felt
his heart agitated by an unusual pulsation.
He had almost reached it, when he observed among gentleman coming

out, dressed in a white frock and a red laced waistcoat, with a small
switch in his