We have abundance of souls flock hither daily, that bring us in very comfortable tidings from _Mincing-lane_, _Salters-hall_, _Bishopsgate-street_, _Jewen-street_, _Moorfields_, _Bartholomew-close_, _Fetter-lane_, _Stepney_, _Hackney_, _Bednal-green_, &c. but more particularly from _Covent-Garden_; among whom, to your credit it be it spoken, I have always pick’d out the most agreeable conversation: for you must know, a little before I absented myself from the pleasures of the upper world, ’twas my fortune to be haul’d before a dozen of damn’d crabbed _cavaliers_, revengeful fellows, who look’d as if they would lose a dinner to hang an honest round-head at any time; and as three or four tun-belly’d lumps of gravity, in blushing formalities, lin’d with coney-skins, and those twelve unlucky disciples order’d the matter (to show they were all fire and tow) they told me a dreadful story of hanging and burning at _Charing-Cross_, in sight of that old palace we before had plunder’d. About which ugly sort of business, when I came to find they were in good earnest, I began to grow as, dizzy in my brains, as a hog troubled with the megrims, and could no more endure the thoughts on’t than I could of _Popery_; on my dying day, I strove all I could to make it easy, but I protest it was in vain, for it prov’d still as hateful to me, as castration to a priest, or barrenness to a young woman: in short, at last it made me think of nothing but rattling of chains, and picking of straws, insomuch that when they fagotted up my thumbs together, and tumbled me into a hell-cart well litter’d with straw, but the devil a wheel to’t, I did but just shut my eyes, and fancy’d myself to be in a dark room in _Bedlam_. In this manner they rumbled me thro’ a long lane of spectators, who star’d at me as if I had been a _rhinoceros_ with a _Bantam_ queen upon my back; at last they dragg’d me into an ill-favour’d piece of timber, in the shape of a welch sign-post, where they tuck’d me up to a beam, and made me keck a little, as if something had gone the wrong way; upon which I fell into a kind of a hag-ridden slubber for a quarter of an hour, dreaming I sunk a thousand leagues into the bowels of the earth, and no sooner awak’d, but found myself, as I told you before, in company with my old master: my sleep prov’d much too short for the recovery of my senses, and tho’ I saw several of my old friends about me, the pain of my neck, and terror of my fall, made me rave worse than a narrow-scutted punk under the hands of a mad-midwife; till by the advice of a consult of physicians, who are here as numerous as _crocodiles_ in the land of _Egypt_; a vesicatory of devil’s-dung was apply’d to my _costern_, which restor’d me to my wits in a few minutes, which in the time of adversity, like ungovernable rebels, had abdicated their master. But that which most troubled me when I found myself _compos mentis_, was the circular impression the hempen collar had left about my gullet, by which the