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I could earn considerably more money; and in this employment I continued to labour diligently for several hours every day, and sometimes half the night.
When I had a mind to relax from this occupation, and particularly if my finances were at a low ebb, I frequently resorted to the Blue Lion, in Gray's-Inn-Lane, a house noted for selling fine ale, and crowded every night with a motley assemblage of visiters, among whom were many thieves, sharpers and other desperate characters, with their doxies. I was introduced to this house (from which hundreds of young persons may date their ruin) by a fellow-clerk, who appeared to have a personal intimacy with most of these obnoxious persons; however, though I listened eagerly to their conversation, (part of which was then unintelligible to me), and fancied them people of uncommon spirit, I was not yet sufficiently depraved to cultivate their acquaintance; but sat with a pipe in my mouth, enveloped in smoke, ruminating like a philosopher on the various characters who tread the great stage of life, and felt a sort of secret presentiment, that I was myself born to undergo a more than common share of vicissitudes and disappointments. How far these ideas were well grounded, the reader will judge when he has perused this narrative, of which I shall here close the fourth Chapter.
