During this recess from business continued Sable, I past much time in contemplating on the various modes of happiness which mankind sought after, and the different means they pursued to attain their adopted wishes; the labours of my fellow adventurers in their diurnal expeditions, which were always communicated to the society together with my own experience, affording me variety of instances. The power of reasoning, and of assimilating their ideas, with which men are indued, to enable them to distinguish the true road to happiness, I found was of little or no service to them in their pursuit, the present gratification of the passions and senses, seems to be the chief consideration and stimulater in all their actions; but when the vigour of youth begins to relax, and the heat of blood to cool, the passions and senses necessarily decay, and they then perceive their error, and lament that they did not in their youth, furnish the storehouse of wisdom, with useful knowledge, to enable them to pass with satisfaction and tranquillity, through age and infirmity, and for want of which they become fretful and peevish, disagreeable to themselves, and to every one else. The youthful auditor here thanked the sage adviser, for the lesson he so gently insinuated, and assured him that he would endeavour to regulate his conduct agreeably to the dictates of reason, and that his study should be to acquire a fund of knowledge, so that the faculties of his mind, might afford him pleasure when his passions and senses should deny it. The wise narrator replyed, he hoped the alluring bates of pleasure would not have power to check his resolution, or destroy those blossoms of virtue whose fruit was happiness. I next, continued Sable, became the property of a very ingenious gentleman, who has entertained the town in a variety of characters, but in none more singular, or more to his emolument, during the time it lasted, than that in which I had the honour to serve him in, and though he has never been remarkable for concealing his follies, yet this is a secret which he has carefully preserved.—To keep you no longer in suspence, I was purchased by this genius, to countenance him in the character of a _Fortune-teller_, a scheme which his thorough knowledge of the town, together with a great variety of anecdotes of a number of people, which he had treasured up, made him the best qualified to act of any man in London; and he was a very _Proteus_, in varying his appearance, for he would be in your company two or three times a day, if he had occasion, in the same number of characters, without your being able to discover him.—It was this gentleman, continued Sable, who removed me from Monmouth-street, to a lodging near Charing-cross, this being the place he had chose to deliver his oracles from, a spot which, time out of mind has been remarkable for the residence of all the extraordinary things and phenomena, which have been deemed worthy the attention of this metropolis.