wanted for company to fill it, or a parson to say grace to a good dinner. At this time we had another daughter born, and every thing went most prosperously with me in the world. My friend, Dr. Clare of Devizes, who was a sporting man, purchased at Lord Audley's sale a handsome curricle, which he offered me, and we soon struck a bargain. Curricles were all the vogue at that time; therefore a dashing young man without a curricle was nothing; and as my wife was a great driver, as well as a good horsewoman, a curricle was almost indispensable. Let no one suppose, from reading this, that I was become a careless squanderer. The habits of economy which, almost from my infancy, I lead imbibed in consequence of the example that I had always before my eyes, did not desert me even under these circumstances. By management I lived as well, kept as good a house, and had my whole establishment so arranged, as to make quite as good an appearance for a thousand or fifteen hundred a year as many persons make who spend more than thrice that sum. I had at all times plenty of money, and I had every comfort and luxury about me; but in the midst of all this apparent extravagance, I never forgot the poor. All my servants were well paid and well fed, and I scarcely ever failed to attend the parish pay table, to see that those who held the office of overseer turned no one away, who was really in distress, without affording him relief. Thus early I gained the character of being _the friend of the poor_. I always pleaded the cause of the widow, the orphan, the aged, and infirm; and, being the largest paymaster in the parish to the fund of the poor, I never pleaded in vain. The idle, the indolent, and the dissolute, I left to fight their own battles; but the infirm, the aged, the widow, and the orphan never fruitlessly sued when I was present, and, as I have just said, I seldom failed to attend; if I did I was sure to hear complaints. My readers will recollect that I am writing these Memoirs during the life-time of hundreds who can speak to this fact; and I speak of it not as boasting, but with the firm conviction that it can be substantiated by hundreds who lived in the parish, and that there is not one who will contradict it. The _friend of the poor_ is a title which I earned very early in life, and I hope that I shall deserve to carry it to my grave. Sorry, however, as I should be to lose this honourable title, I would ten thousand times rather lose it than lose the heart-cheering, soul-inspiring reflection that I have always been their friend not for the name, but for the pleasure I felt in protecting and assisting my less fortunate fellow-creatures, when they were in distress. It may be said, if you are really so, why not rest satisfied with the pleasure of knowing it? Why do you sound your own trumpet, and endeavour to blazon it forth to the world? My answer is, because my being incarcerated here for _two years and