CHAPTER XXV.
A table of various accidents.
As your guide, showing you an exhibition of paintings, will linger over the first room, and then pass the second in hurried review to come the quicker to a third of greater interest, so I, having dwelt, may be, at undue length upon some secondary passages in this history, must economise my space by touching lightly on the events that came immediately before Moll's marriage, and so get to those more moving accidents which followed. Here, therefore, will I transcribe certain notes (forming a brief chronicle) from that secret journal which, for the clearer understanding of my position, I began to keep the day I took possession of Simon's lodge and entered upon my new office.
December 8. Very busy all this forenoon setting my new house in order, conveying, with the help of the gardener, all those domestic and personal goods that belong to Simon into the attick; but Lord! so few these things, and they so patched and worn, that altogether they are not worth ten shillings of anybody's money. I find the house wondrous neat and clean in every part, but so comfortless and prison-like, that I look forward with little relish to living here when the time comes for me to leave the Court. After this to examining books, papers, etc., and the more closely I look into these, the more assured I am that never was any servant
212
