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CHAPTER II.

Quit the Crown Office, and engage as Reader in a Printing Office.—Determine to live a strictly honest life.—Meet with an old Acquaintance who laughs me out of my Resolution.—Give up all thoughts of Servitude and become a professed Thief.

I HAD, on my second arrival in London, engaged a small apartment in a creditable house, and regulated my expenses upon principles of the strictest economy; but notwithstanding every possible effort, I soon found it impossible to subsist within my income; consequently, in a few weeks I had sensibly decreased my little capital. I, therefore, began to consider how I might obtain a more productive situation, as I saw no prospect of my present salary being augmented. At this juncture I met with an advertisement for a person of good education, to act as Reader in a Printing Office. Though this was an employment of which I had not the least idea, I determined to offer myself, conceiving there could be nothing very difficult in its duties. Having, therefore, first inquired into the nature of the latter I boldly applied to the advertiser Mr. Barnard, on Snow-hill; and in answer to his queries, replied that I had lately left the service of a country printer,