If I were given to prolixity, and allowed myself to be led away from the subject before me, I might here be tempted to relate certain particulars concerning Thomas Gent; how under his first London master, Mr. Midwinter, whose house was a ballad-house, “he worked many times from five in the morning till twelve at night, and frequently without food from breakfast till five or six in the evening, through their hurry with hawkers.” And how in that same service he wrote, which is to say in modern language _reported_, Dr. Sacheverel's sermon after his suspension, for which his master gave him a crown piece, and a pair of breeches,—not before they were wanted;—and by which the said master gained nearly thirty pounds in the course of the week. And how he once engaged with Mr. Francis Clifton, who having had a liberal education at Oxford proved a Papist, set up a press, printed a newspaper, and getting in debt moved his goods into the liberty of the Fleet and there became entered as a prisoner; and how Gent sometimes in extreme weather worked for him under a mean shed adjoining to the prison walls, when snow and rain fell alternately on the cases, yet, he says, the number of wide mouthed stentorian hawkers, brisk trade, and very often a glass of good ale, revived the drooping spirits of him and his fellow workmen: and he often admired the success of this Mr. Clifton in his station, for whether through pity of mankind or the immediate hand of Divine Providence to his family, advantageous jobs so often flowed upon him as gave him cause to be merry under his heavy misfortunes.