The hue and cry went after Jack to apprehend him dead or alive, wherever he could be found. The constables looked out for him in all his usual haunts; but to no purpose. Where d'ye think they found him at last? Even smoking his pipe, very quietly, at his brother Martin's; from whence he was carried with a vast mob at his heels, before the worshipful Mr. Justice Overdo. Several of his neighbours made oath,* that of late, the prisoner had been observed to lead a very dissolute life, renouncing even his usual hypocrisy and pretences to sobriety; that he frequented taverns and eating-houses, and had been often guilty of drunkenness and gluttony at my Lord Mayor's table; that he had been seen in the company of lewd women; that he had transferred his usual care of the engrossed copy of his father's will to bank bills, orders for tallies, and debentures:** these he now affirmed, with more literal truth, to be meat, drink, and cloth, the philosopher's stone, and the universal medicine;*** that he was so far from showing his customary reverence to the will, that he kept company with those that called his father a cheating rogue, and his will a forgery; that he not only sat quietly and heard his father railed at, but often chimed in with the discourse, and hugged the authors as his bosom friends;**** that instead of asking for blows at the corners of the streets, he now bestowed them as plentifully as he begged them before.*** In short, that he was grown a mere rake; and had nothing left in him of old Jack except his spite to John Bull's mother. * The manners of the Dissenters changed from their former strictness. ** Dealing much in stock-jobbing. *** "Tale of a Tub." **** Herding with deists and atheists. Another witness made oath, that Jack had been overheard bragging of a trick* he had found out to manage the "old formal jade," as he used to call her. "Hang this numb-skull of mine," quoth he, "that I could not light on it sooner. As long as I go in this ragged tattered coat, I am so well known, that I am hunted away from the old woman's door by every barking cur about the house; they bid me defiance. There's no doing mischief as an open enemy; I must find some way or other of getting within doors, and then I shall have better opportunities of playing my pranks, besides the benefit of good keeping." * Getting into places and Church preferments by occasional conformity.