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and many were the tight apprentices, even at the west end of the town, who used to turn back in admiration of Bachelor Bill, when, of a Sunday afternoon, he drove down his varment gig to his snug little box on the borders of Turnham Green. Bill's happiness was not, however, wholly without alloy. The ladies of pleasure are always so excessively angry when a man does not make love to them, that there is nothing they will not say against him; and the fair matrons in the vicinity of Fidler's Row spread all manner of unfounded reports against poor Bachelor Bill. By degrees, however,—for, as Tacitus has said, doubtless with a prophetic eye to Bachelor Bill, "the truth gains by delay,"—these reports began to die insensibly away; and Bill, now waxing near to the confines of middle age, his friends comfortably settled for him, that he would be Bachelor Bill all his life. For the rest, he was an excellent fellow,—gave his broken victuals to the poor,—professed a liberal turn of thinking,—and in all the quarrels among the blowens, (your crack blowens are a quarrelsome set!) always took part with the weakest. Although Bill affected to be very