The spirit stirred within me as I beheld the contrite looks of the culprit, and I said to myself--"While he lies in jail, his poor wife and his infants may perish with hunger." I paid the fine, and, though the mayor did very broadly hint to me that a little punishment would do the man good, and his wife too, seeing that he was a barbarous fellow, I offered myself for his security, and thus sent him back to his rejoicing family. I said to myself--"This very night will I witness the happiness I have created." I went accordingly to the man's house, where I found the wicked fellow raving with drink, and beating his wife as before, his children screaming with terror, and the neighbours crying out for a constable. I did but say a word of reprehension to him, when the brutish ingrate, leaving his rib, fell foul of myself, mauling me cruelly; and I believe he would have beaten me to death, had I not been rescued by the timely appearance of a constable. "Thee sees the end of thy humanity!" said the mayor, when I entered his office the next morning, that my black eye and bruised visage might testify against the ungrateful man; "thee will not object to my committing the fellow now?" "Nay," said I; "it is drunkenness that has made the poor man mad. Therefore lock him up in prison until his madness hath departed." "I will," said the mayor; "and thee will have the goodness to pay over to the clerk the hundred dollars in which thee bound thyself that the rascal should keep the peace." "Verily," said I, "it is not just I should pay the money; for the beating was upon my own body." "Truly," said the mayor, "and so it was; and therefore it is the harder that thee should have to pay it. But pay it thee must, the man having broken the peace as much in beating thee, as if it had been any other citizen of the commonwealth." And so much satisfaction I had for befriending the sot; the charity, which did more harm than good even to the man's poor family, since it exposed them a second time to his fury, costing me, without counting the fine paid on the first day, a sore beating and one hundred dollars. My next misadventure was the being cheated in a very aggravated way by a poor man to whom I loaned money, without exacting bond or voucher, the same being loaned to re-establish him in a gainful business, which had been interrupted by an unfortunate accident. For, having prospered in his business, and I requiring that he should now repay the money, that I might devote it to the service of others, he very impudently averred that he had never had any thing of me, except advice and a good word of recommendation here and there; swore that he never paid away or received a cent without giving or taking a receipt; defied me to prove my claim; and concluded his baseness by threatening to kick me out of his workshop. These instances of ingratitude were followed by others of a still deeper die, and so numerous, that I can mention only a few of them.