The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell : $b a gentleman, who, tho' deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight, with their future contingencies of fortune
General
The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell : $b a gentleman, who, tho' deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight, with their future contingencies of fortune
Campbell, Duncan, 1680?-1730; Deaf people -- Great Britain -- Biography; Occultism -- Early works to 1900; Prophets -- Great Britain -- Biography
out of their estates, he went on very pleasantly for a time, still
spending and never getting, without ever considering that it must, by
inevitable consequence, fall to his lot at last to be entirely reduced
to a state of indigence and want. And what commonly heightens the
misfortune of such men, and so of all gentlemen's younger brothers, who
live upon the ready money that is given them for their portions, is,
that the prosperity they live in for a time gains them credit enough
just to bring them in debt, and render them more miserable than those
very wretches who never had either any money or credit at all. They run
themselves into debt out of shame, and to put off the evil day of
appearing ruined men as long as they can, and then, when their tempers
are soured by adversity, they grow tired of their own lives; and then,
in a quarrel, they or some other gentleman, may be, is run through, or
else being hunted by bailiffs, they exercise their swords upon those
pursuers. Thus, where gentlemen will not consider their circumstances,
their very prosperity is a cause of, and aggravates their misery; their
very pride, which was a decent pride at first, in keeping up and
maintaining their credit, subjects them too often to the lowest and the
meanest acts, and their courage, which was of a laudable kind, turns
into a brutish and savage rage; and all the fine, esteemed, flourishing,
and happy gentleman ends, and is lost in the contemned, poor and
miserable desperado, whose portion at last is confinement and a gaol,
and sometimes even worse, and what I shall not so much as name here.
Into many of these calamities Mr. Campbell had brought himself before it
was long, by his heedlessness, and running, according to the wild
dictates of youth, counter to all sound and wholesome advice. He had, it
seems, run himself into debt, and one day as he was at a coffee-house,
the sign of the Three Crowns, in Great Queen-street, in rushed four
bailiffs upon him, who being directed by the creditor's wife, had
watched him into that house, and told him they had a warrant against
him, and upon his not answering, they being unacquainted with his being
deaf and dumb, offered to seize his sword. He startled at their offering
of violence, and taking them for ruffians, which he had often met with,
repelled the assaulters, and drawing his sword, as one man, more bold
than the rest, closed in with him, he shortened his blade, and in the
fall pinned the fellow through the shoulder, and himself through the
leg, to the floor. After that he stood at bay with all the four
officers, when the most mischievous assailant of them all, the
creditor's wife, ventured to step into the fray, and very barbarously
took hold of that nameless part of the man, for which, as she was a
married woman, nature methinks should have taught her to have a greater
tenderness, and almost squeezed and crushed those vitals to death. But
at last he got free from them all, and was going away as fast as he
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