success of his first attempt (in which he was not discovered, because he was not suspected to be capable of so much baseness) encouraged him to a second; and the success of his second attempt encouraged him to greater extravagances and more expensive risk than he had ventured upon before. But his wickedness, which in the former instances had been wrongfully charged upon the servants of the family, being at last detected, and his parents taking him very severely to task on account of such an abandoned and depraved conduct, he left them in a fit of anger and remorse, and became a thoughtless and unhappy wanderer; in this situation falling one evening into a company whose mirth and gaiety greatly delighted him, and whose genteel appearance led him to suppose they were gentlemen, though in reality they were no other than highwaymen, he was prevailed on in an unguarded moment, when heated with liquor, to make an incursion with this infamous banditti, and actually stopped a gentleman and demanded his money; fortunately, however for this unhappy youth, the gentleman was an old school fellow, and making himself known to him, with much intreaty prevailed on him immediately to leave the company of those desperate adventurers, and totally to abandon a mode of life so shockingly wicked in itself, and so dreadfully fatal in its consequences.
"But from the idle and dissipated manner in which he had spent his time, he had contracted an unconquerable habit of indolence, and a rooted aversion to business; in this frame of mind, the army became his last resource, into which he entered as a common soldier, but after a short time his itch for pilfering returning, he could not refrain from making free with some money with which he was intrusted by his officer; being detected, he was punished with that rigorous severity with which thefts in the army usually are, and being afterwards thrown into the Savoy prison, to prevent a repetition of his crime, he died there in a few days of his wounds in the utmost misery. When the Bramin had finished this melancholy tale, the poor wolf, as if he was conscious how nearly it concerned him, heightened the horrour with which it had filled us by such a mournful and terrifying howl, as made us heartily glad to quit the room."
CHAP. VII.
Of the wonderful Transmigration of Master Richard Rustick into the Body of a Bear.
In the next apartment into which Mr. Wiseman conducted us, we saw the cub of a bear, who lay upon the floor to which he was chained, without having the good manners to rise when we entered; but when the Bramin applied his wand to young Bruin's buttocks, he heaved up his shaggy hide with a kind of lazy resentment, and saluted us with a reluctant grin and a savage growl, which plainly intimated that he did not think himself much beholden to us for our company. "This young brute, said our conductor, is animated by the soul of the late matter Rustick, of clownish memory. His father was a gentleman of rank and fortune, and greatly beloved and respected by all his acquaintance; and if his son Richard had possessed the same virtues and accomplishments, he might afterwards have enjoyed his title and estate with equal comfort and reputation. But as merit does not go by inheritance, like house and land, young Rustick's character was entirely the reverse of his father's. He was of an awkward clumsy make; and the heaviness of his disposition, and the coarseness of his manners perfectly corresponded with the shape of his body. Though he was sent to school very early, and put under the care of the best instructors which the country afforded, he was a considerable time before he could tell his letters, and much longer before he could read with tolerable accuracy: and even then he pronounced every thing with such a clownish accent and such a drawling tone, that any stranger would have taken him for a young country bumkin, who had been used to follow the plow tail, and not for the son and heir of a wealthy gentleman. He was equally eminent for his neatness and dexterity in the art of penmanship; for, even when he was twelve years old, if you had seen the letter which he then sent to his mamma without the knowledge of his master, it was wrote so crooked (i.e. not from side to side as it ought to have been, but from corner to corner) and the strokes were all so coarse and uneven, and the whole of the letter so awkwardly spelt, and so unmercifully blotted and bedawbed, that you would have thought it had been the elegant epistle of Tony Clodhopper to his grandmother Goody Linsey Woolsey. As for his mamma, poor gentlewoman! when she first opened it, she thought it had been sent to her by some impudent shoe black or chimney sweeper; but when she had directed her eyes to the bottom and read (though not, I assure you, without the greatest difficulty)—"from yr, loven ind respactfle sun, Rickard Rostick" she was so much oppressed with shame and vexation, that she tore the letter into a thousand pieces, and was ready to burst into tears. He was alike remarkable for the politeness of his manners, and his agreeable address; for he had such a treacherous memory, though he had been frequently reminded of the propriety and indeed the necessity of observing those little punctilios of good behaviour, that he seldom remembered when any company entered the room in which he happened to be sitting, either to rise from his chair or take off his hat; and when he was told of it either by his parents or his master, he would bounce up, and snatch of his hat in such an awkward hurry, grinning and leering the whole time, that you would have thought he had just started from a dream; and even then he would generally forget to finish the rude ceremony by making one of his ducking bows. It is true, indeed, he had been under the hands of a dancing master; but notwithstanding the utmost care and assiduity of his teacher, who was esteemed a very excellent one; he was never able to perform a whit better than he does in his present shape. In short, you might as well have kept a hog in training for Newmarket races, or an ox for his majesty to ride upon at a grand review, as have attempted to initiate master Dicky Rustick in the elements of politeness and good breeding. With such a delicate disposition, and such amiable talents, you will readily perceive that he must have been a most agreeable play fellow. His favorite diversion was that which has been distinguished by
the vulgar, by the well known name of Pully Hawly, in which he so much excelled that whenever he was invited by the young gentlemen and ladies in the neighbourhood to play with them, he generally rewarded their civility by tearing their coats or pulling their clothes off their backs before he returned home; so that at last they bestowed upon him, by general consent, the honourable title of 'Squire Bruin. It must, however, be acknowledged that he was a youth of such impartial justice, that he shewed as little favour to his own clothes as to those of other people; for what with climbing up old trees, and rambling over hedges and ditches, to seek for birds nests, he commonly appeared by dinner time, how well soever he had been dressed in the morning, in as ragged a coat as he wears at present. It must also be remarked, that if the young gentlemen and ladies soon grew weary, as indeed they did, of such a rough play fellow, he, in his turn, was as willing to leave their company, as they were to be rid of his; for his chief delight was to associate with such vulgar boys and girls as were of the same rugged disposition as himself. With these he could pull and hawl and romp and tear as long as he pleased; and the more active he became in this raggamuffin species of diversion, the more they relished his company. But, upon occasion, he could fight as well as play: I mean when he either was provoked to it by his equals, or tempted to it by the hopes of defrauding of their little property those who he knew had neither strength enough nor courage to resist him. But whatever was his motive either for beginning or suffering himself to be drawn into an engagement, he was very far from confining himself to any rules of honour, or to the established laws of war; for instead of boxing fairly, he would kick, pull hair, bite, and scratch most unmercifully, and never fail to take every advantage of his antagonist after he had brought him to the ground. For these reasons he was soon dignified with the nick name of Dick Bear, even by the vulgar boys in the streets; and most of them afterwards took care never to engage with him unless when
