"The first day I went abroad with my new instructor, he carried me directly into the city, and as we went first to the water side, he led me into the long room at the custom house; we were but a couple of ragged boys at best, but I was much the worse; my leader had a shirt, a hat and a neckcloth; as for me, I had neither of the three, nor had I spoiled my manners so much as to have a hat on my head since my nurse died, which was now some years. His orders to me were to keep him always in sight and near him, but not close to him; nor to take any notice of him at any time till he came to me; and if any hurly-burly happened I should by no means know him, or pretend to have anything to do with him. I observed my orders to a tittle, while he peered into every corner, and had his eye upon everybody. I had my eye directly upon him, but went always at a distance, looking as it were for pins, and picking them up out of the dust as I found them and then sticking them on my sleeve, where I had at last got forty or fifty good pins; but still my eye was upon my comrade, who, I observed, was very busy among the crowds of people that stood at the board doing business with the officers.

"At length he comes over to me and stooping, as if he would pick up a pin close to me, he put something into my hand and said, "put that up and follow me down stairs quickly;" he did not run but shuffled along apace through the crowd, and went down—not the great stairs which we came in at, but a little narrow staircase at the other end of the long room. I followed, and he found I did, and so went on, not stopping below as I expected, nor speaking one word to me, till through innumerable narrow passages, alleys and dark ways, we were got up into Fenchurch Street, and through Billiter Lane into Leadenhall Street, and from thence into Leadenhall Market.

In a quiet place in the market, it not being meat market day, the two boys looked over the spoil which the elder thief had thus thrust into little Jack's hands. It was a gentleman's letter-case full of checks and bills, beside many private notes. Most of the bills are too large for them, but they find one note, the smallest of all, which the elder presents for payment, and gets the money on. Then they divide the spoil, and Jack gets his share. From that hour trouble begins with the poor little vagabond. He has no place to put his money; his ragged pockets are full of holes, and he has no roof over his head, no box, drawer, or any crevice to hide his gains in.

"Nothing could be more perplexing than this money was to me all this night. I carried it in my hand a good while, for it was all in gold, all but fourteen shillings; that is to say it was four guineas and fourteen shillings, and that fourteen shillings was more difficult to carry than four guineas. At last I sat down and pulled off one of my shoes and put the four guineas into that, but after I had gone awhile my shoes hurt me so that I could not go on; so I was fain to sit down again and take it out of my shoe and carry it in my hand; then I found a dirty linen rag in the street and wrapped it up together, and carried it in that a good way. I have often since heard people say when they have been talking of money they could not get, 'I wish I had it in a foul clout.' In truth I had mine in a foul clout, for it was foul according to the letter of that saying, but it served me till I came to a convenient place, and then I sat down and washed the cloth in the canal, and so then put my money in again. Well, I carried it home with me to my lodging in the glass house, and when I went to go to sleep I knew not what to do with it. If I had let any of the black crew I was with know of it, I should have been smothered in the ashes for it, or robbed of it, or some trick or other put upon me for it; so I knew not what to do, but lay with it in my hand and my hand in my bosom, and then sleep went from my eyes. O the weight of human care! I, a poor beggar boy could not sleep as soon as I had a little money to keep, who before that, could have slept upon a heap of brick-bats, stones or cinders, or anywhere, as sound as a rich man does on his down bed, and sounder, too.

"Every now and then dropping asleep, I would dream that my money was lost, and start like one frighted; then find it fast in my hand, try to go to sleep again, but could not for a long while; then start and drop again. At last a fancy came into my head that if I fell asleep I should dream of the money and talk of it in my sleep, and tell that I had money; which if I should do, and one of the rogues should hear me, they would pick it out of my bosom, and out of my hand without waking me; and after that thought I could not sleep a wink more; so I passed that night over in care and anxiety enough; and this, I may safely say, was the first night's rest that I lost by the cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches.

"As soon as it was day, I got out of the hole we lay in, and rambled abroad in the fields towards Stepney, and there I mused and considered what I should do with this money, and many a time I wished I had not had it; for after all my ruminating upon it, and what course I should take with it, or where I should put it, I could not hit upon any one thing, or any possible method to secure it, and it perplexed me so, that at last I sat down and cried heartily.

"When my crying was over, the case was the same. I had the money still, but what to do with it I could not tell. At last it came into my head that I would look out for some hole in a tree, and seek to hide it there till I should have occasion for it. Big with this discovery, as I thought it, I began to look for a tree, but there were no trees in the fields about Stepney or Mile-End that looked fit for my purpose; and if there were any that I began to look narrowly at, the fields were so full of people that they would see if I went to hide anything there, and I thought the people eyed me, as it were, and that two men in particular followed me to see what I intended to do.

"This drove me further off, and I crossed the road at Mile-End, and in the middle of the town went down a lane that goes away to the Blind Beggar's in Bethnal Green; when I came a little way in the lane, I found a foot-path over the fields, and in those fields several trees for my turn, as I thought; at last one tree had a little hole in it, pretty high out of my reach, and I climbed up the tree to get it, and came there, I put my hand in, and found, as I thought, a place very fit. So I placed my treasure there and was mightily well satisfied with me; but, behold, putting my hand in to lay it more commodiously, as I thought, of a sudden it slipped away from me, and I found the tree was hollow, and my little parcel was fallen in quite out of my reach, and how far it might go in I knew not, so that in a word my money was quite gone, irrevocably lost; there could be no worm as much as to hope ever to get it again, for it was a vast, great tree.

"As young as I was, I was now sensible what a fool I was before, that I could not think of ways to hide my money, but must come thus far to throw it into a hole where I could not reach it. Well, I thrust my hand quite up to my elbow, but no bottom was to be found, or any end of the hole or cavity; I got a stick off the tree, and thrust it in a great way, but all was one. Then I cried, nay, roared out, I was in such a passion; then I got down the tree again, then up again; I thrust in my hand again till I scratched my arm and made it bleed, and cried all the while most violently; then I began to think that I had not so much as a half-penny left for a half-penny roll, and I was hungry, and then I cried again; then I came away in despair, crying and roaring like a little boy that had been whipped; then I went back again to the tree and up the tree again, and this I did several times.

"The last time I had gotten up the tree I happened to come down not on the same side that I went up and came down before, but on the other side of the tree, and on the other side of the bank also; and behold the tree had a great open place in the side of it close to the ground, as old hollow trees often have; and, looking into the open

place, to my inexpressible joy there lay my money and my linen rag, all wrapped up just as I had put it into the hole; for, the tree being hollow all the way up, there had been some moss or light stuff (which I had not judgment enough to know) was not firm, and had given way when it came to drop out of my hand, and so it had slipped quite down at once.

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It would tire the reader should I dwell on all the little boyish tricks that I played in the ecstasy of my joy and satisfaction when I found my money. Joy is as extravagant as grief, and since I've been a man I have often thought that had such a thing befallen a man so to have lost all he had, and not have a bit of bread to eat, and then so strangely to find it over again, after having given it over so effectually-I say, had it been so with a man, it might have hazarded his using some violence upon himself."

We cannot follow any further in detail the fortunes of little Jack. Before he gets too deep in his career of a pickpocket to be arrested by the law, he is kidnapped by the captain of a vessel who has given him some drugged liquor, and, while insensible, he is carried off to the colony of Virginia, in America, where he is sold to a master, an English planter who is cultivating lands in these new colonies belonging to England. The time of servitude for which he is sold is five years, and, after he recovers his liberty, Jack manages so well, that he himself becomes a landholder and a prosperous man, and ends his story in great peace and contentment.

During his period of imprisonment in Newgate, De Foe began the publication of a sort of journal called the Review, published twice a week, which was somewhat on the plan of the modern newspaper. In this he gave such news, foreign and native, as he could get hold of, and criticisms on politics at home and abroad. Finding that politics alone would not interest his readers, he formed the idea of a Scandal Club, whose members should discuss all the topics of the day in his paper. Like most of De Foe's works, the Review has passed into obscurity, but I refer to it because this was the forerunner of the Tatler, Spectator, and other series written by the two famous English writers who are the subjects of our next talk.

TALK XXXVIII.

ON ADDISON and Steele, EDITORS OF THE SPECTATOR.

Died 1719.

Born 1671.

Died 1729.

THE names of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele are almost as closely interwoven in friendship as those Born 1672. of Beaumont and Fletcher, and their lives were united for a much longer period than those of the two dramatists. They were school boys together in the Charter House school-Addison, the head boy in his class, grave, studious, painstaking; Steele, a merry youngster who got whipped as often as praised, and was gay and lighthearted in spite of the rod and his unmastered lessons. There was always the same difference between them in after life, and to the last of his days Steele always seemed to regard Addison with the same sort of awe he had felt for the boy who was always above him in school.

Joseph Addison was one of the most gifted men of his age. He wrote sufficiently well in college to attract attention, and almost as soon as he left his studies he was offered a position in public life. But politics did not suit his taste, and he came back to his books and his pen, rather soured and disappointed by his experience. His earlier works were nearly all of them in verse, and his first success was the tragedy of Cato, which had a run at the theater only equalled by Gay's Beggars' Opera. But it was as a prosewriter, and particularly as the writer of prose essays, that Addison made his reputation.

It was Steele, not Addison, who began the enterprise that made them both honored among English essayists. While Addison had been trying political life, Steele