The two exiles so nearly united in fortune and interest took a lodging
together, where at their first leisure they began to reflect on the
numberless misfortunes and vexations of their life past, and could not
tell of the sudden to what failure in their conduct they ought to impute
them, when, after some recollection, they called to mind the copy of
their father’s will which they had so happily recovered. This was
immediately produced, and a firm resolution taken between them to alter
whatever was already amiss, and reduce all their future measures to the
strictest obedience prescribed therein. The main body of the will (as
the reader cannot easily have forgot) consisted in certain admirable
rules, about the wearing of their coats, in the perusal whereof the two
brothers at every period duly comparing the doctrine with the practice,
there was never seen a wider difference between two things, horrible
downright transgressions of every point. Upon which they both resolved
without further delay to fall immediately upon reducing the whole exactly
after their father’s model.
But here it is good to stop the hasty reader, ever impatient to see the
end of an adventure before we writers can duly prepare him for it. I am
to record that these two brothers began to be distinguished at this time
by certain names. One of them desired to be called Martin, and the other
took the appellation of Jack. These two had lived in much friendship and
agreement under the tyranny of their brother Peter, as it is the talent
of fellow-sufferers to do, men in misfortune being like men in the dark,
to whom all colours are the same. But when they came forward into the
world, and began to display themselves to each other and to the light,
their complexions appeared extremely different, which the present posture
of their affairs gave them sudden opportunity to discover.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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