Thus malice and folly, by dint of noise and impudence, and strong though empty assertions, often run down modesty and good sense. Among the common people it is the same, but only done in a different manner. For example, an ordinary person that had consulted, might say, as he walked along, there goes the dumb gentleman who writes down any name of a stranger at first sight. Steps up a blunt fellow, that takes stubbornness for sense, and says, That is a confounded lie; he is a cheat and an impostor, and you are one of his accomplices; he will tell me my name, I suppose, if you tell it him first: he is no more dumb than I am; he can speak and hear as well as us; I have been with those that say they have heard him; I wish I and two or three more had him in our stable, and I warrant you with our cartwhips we would lick some words out of his chaps, as dumb as you call him. I tell you it is all a lie, and all a bite. If the other desires to be convinced for himself by his own experience, the rougher rogue, who perhaps has stronger sinews than the other, answers, If you lie any farther I will knock you down; and so he is the vulgar wit, and the mouth of the rabble-rout, and thus the detraction spreads below with very good success, as it does above in another kind. As there are two comical adventures in his life, which directly suit and correspond with the foregoing reflections, this seems the most proper place to insert them in. The first consists of a kind of mob-way of usage he met with from a fellow who got to be an officer in the army, but by the following behaviour will be found unworthy of the name and the commission.