This was my notion: I was now in my native country, where my circumstances were easy, and though I had ill-luck abroad, for I brought little money home with me, yet, by a little good management, I might soon have money by me. I had nobody to keep but myself, and my plantations in Virginia generally returned me from £400 to £600 a year, one year above £700, and to go thither, I concluded, was to be buried alive; so I put off all thoughts of it, and resolved to settle somewhere in England where I might know everybody and nobody know me. I was not long in concluding where to pitch, for as I spoke the French tongue perfectly well, having been so many years among them, it was easy for me to pass for a Frenchman. So I went to Canterbury, called myself an Englishman among the French, and a Frenchman among the English; and on that score was the more perfectly concealed, going by the name of Monsieur Charnot with the French, and was called Mr. Charnock among the English. Here indeed I lived perfectly incog. I made no particular acquaintance so as to be intimate, and yet I knew everybody, and everybody knew me. I discoursed in common, talked French with the Walloons, and English with the English; and lived retired and sober, and was well enough received by all sorts; but as I meddled with nobody’s business, so nobody meddled with mine; I thought I lived pretty well. But I was not fully satisfied. A settled family life was the thing I loved; had made two pushes at it, as you have heard, but with ill-success; yet the miscarriage of what was past did not discourage me at all, but I resolved to marry. I looked out for a woman as suitable as I could, but always found some thing or other to shock my fancy, except once a gentleman’s daughter of good fashion; but I met with so many repulses of one kind or another that I was forced to give it over; and indeed, though I might be said to be a lover in this suit, and had managed myself so well with the young lady that I had no difficulty left but what would soon have been adjusted, yet her father was so difficult, made so many objections, was to-day not pleased one way, to-morrow another, that he would stand by nothing that he himself had proposed, nor could he be ever brought to be of the same mind two days together; so that we at last put an end to the pretensions, for she would not marry without her father’s consent, and I would not steal her, and so that affair ended. I cannot say but I was a little vexed at the disappointment of this, so I left the city of Canterbury and went to London in the stage-coach. Here I had an odd scene presented as ever happened of its kind.