moment? But, if neither virtue nor religion can restrain your inordinate appetites, are there not many women as handsome as your friend's wife, whom, though not with innocence, you may possess with a much less degree of guilt? What motive then can thus hurry you on to the destruction of yourself and your friend? doth the peculiar rankness of the guilt add any zest to the sin? doth it enhance the pleasure as much as we may be assured it will the punishment?
''But if you can be so lost to all sense of fear, and of shame, and of goodness, as not to be debarred by the evil which you are to bring on yourself, by the extreme baseness of the action, nor by the ruin in which you are to involve others, let me still urge the difficulty, I may say, the impossibility of the success. You are attacking a fortress on a rock; a chastity so strongly defended, as well by a happy natural disposition of mind as by the strongest principles of religion and virtue, implanted by education and nourished and improved by habit, that the woman must be invincible even without that firm and constant affection of her husband which would guard a much looser and worse-disposed heart. What therefore are you attempting but to introduce distrust, and perhaps disunion, between an innocent and a happy couple, in which too you cannot succeed without bringing, I am convinced, certain destruction on your own head?
''Desist, therefore, let me advise you, from this enormous crime; retreat from the vain attempt of climbing a precipice which it is impossible you should ever ascend, where you must probably soon fall into utter perdition, and can have no other hope but of dragging down your best friend into perdition with you.
''I can think of but one argument more, and that, indeed, a very bad one; you throw away that time in an impossible attempt, which might, in other places, crown your sinful endeavours with success.'
'And so ends the dismal ditty.'
'D--n me,' cries one, 'did ever mortal hear such d--ned stuff?'
'Upon my soul,' said another, 'I like the last argument well enough. There is some sense in that; for d--n me if I had not rather go to D-- g--ss at any time than follow a virtuous b---- for a fortnight.'
'Tom,' says one of them, 'let us set the ditty to music; let us subscribe to have it set by Handel; it will make an excellent oratorio.'
'D--n me, Jack,' says another, 'we'll have it set to a psalm-tune, and we'll sing it next Sunday at St James's church, and I'll bear a bob, d--n me.'
'Fie upon it! gentlemen, fie upon it!' said a frier, who came up; 'do you think there is any wit and humour in this ribaldry; or, if there were, would it make any atonement for abusing religion and virtue?'
'Heyday!' cries one, 'this is a frier in good earnest.'
'Whatever I am,' said the frier, 'I hope at least you are what you appear to be. Heaven forbid, for the sake of our posterity, that you should be gentlemen.'
'Jack,' cries one, 'let us toss the frier in a blanket.'
'Me in a blanket?' said the frier: 'by the dignity of man, I will twist the neck of every one of you as sure as ever the neck of a dunghill-cock was twisted.' At which words he pulled off his mask, and the tremendous majesty of Colonel Bath appeared, from which the bucks fled away as fast as the Trojans heretofore from the face of Achilles. The colonel did not think it worth while to pursue any other of them except him who had the letter in his hand, which the colonel desired to see, and the other delivered, saying it was very much at his service.
The colonel being possessed of the letter, retired as privately as he could, in order to give it a careful perusal; for, badly as it had been read by the orator, there were some passages in it which had pleased the colonel. He had just gone through it when Booth passed by him; upon which the colonel called to him, and, delivering him the letter, bid him put it in his pocket and read it at his leisure. He made many encomiums upon it, and told Booth it would be of service to him, and was proper for all young men to read.
Booth had not yet seen his wife; but, as he concluded she was safe with Mrs. James, he was not uneasy. He had been prevented searching farther after her by the lady in the blue domino, who had joined him again. Booth had now made these discoveries: that the lady was pretty
