My heart
palpitates with hope and fear--my head is bursting with anxiety and
calculation; yet I can listen to a singer and translate verses about
a knife."
"Mrs. Montagu has been here; she says I ought to have a statue
erected to me for my diligent attendance on my compting-house duties.
The _wits_ and the _blues_ (as it is the fashion to call them) will
be happy enough, no doubt, to have me safe at the brewery--_out of
their way_."
"A very strange thing happened in the year 1776, and I never wrote it
down,--I must write it down now. A woman came to London from a
distant county to prosecute some business, and fell into distress;
she was sullen and silent, and the people with whom her affairs
connected her advised her to apply for assistance to some friend.
What friends can I have in London? says the woman, nobody here knows
anything of me. One can't tell _that_, was the reply. Where have you
lived? I have wandered much, says she, but I am originally from
Litchfield. Who did you know in Litchfield in your youth? Oh, nobody
of any note, I'll warrant: I knew one _David Garrick_, indeed, but I
once heard that he turned strolling player, and is probably dead long
ago; I also knew an obscure man, _Samuel Johnson_, very good he was
too; but who can know anything of poor Johnson? I was likewise
acquainted with _Robert James_, a quack doctor. _He_ is, I suppose,
no very reputable connection if I could find him. Thus did this woman
name and discriminate the three best known characters in
London--perhaps in Europe.
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