 rascal, and the approbation which his companions discovered were alarming. I preserved fortitude sufficient to assure them, it was not a play-book that I was reading, and opened it to convince them, while I edged away towards the quarter-deck, which I gained almost in the same manner that a cat keeps curs at bay till she steals into her hole.

I FEAR I tire you with these tedious accounts of myself: you say not; be it as it will, I have taken the liberty of a friend; and as you appear depressed with the peculiarity of your situation, my intention is only that you may compare notes, and see whether you

have hitherto been equally unfortunate. I have little more to relate that is worth your hearing. I arrived at Chester, and resolved to write to such travelling companies as I could procure any intelligence of. My knowledge of music, my talents as a singer, and my recent arrival from Dublin, were recommendations that ensured me several engagements. I chose one in a company that was then at Leeds in Yorkshire. In this my ill stars were again predominant. I found them in a state of anarchy, despised by the town, and quarrelling with one another, their manager calling them all rascals, and they returning the compliment. Here I discovered, too, how necessary practice is to the player; and that, though some of them could scarce read, they could all speak on the stage better than I could.

IN less than three weeks the greater part of the people separated, and, no others coming to supply their places, the company no longer existed. A letter had followed me from Chester, inviting me to join another sett, then at Hereford; but it had been wrote near a month, it was a hundred and sixty miles across the country, and I did not know, if I set out, whether I should find them there; or if I did, whether they might then stand in need of my assistance. But my ten pound bill was, by this time, notwithstanding all my oeconomy, reduced to eleven shillings and six-pence. With a heavy heart then, and a light purse, did I begin another journey; and on the fifth day of my peregrination, entered an inn by the road-side, which was eight and twenty miles from Hereford, with the sum of nine-pence in my pocket, and made

my exit in the morning pennyless. The fatigue of my journey, and the penurious manner in which I had lived, had so reduced my spirits, that
