'If you mean lie,' said he, 'I have caught you at last; for 'tis as true as true can be, and I will tell you all about it. You must know that 'tis now the fashion for gentlemen to be their own coachmen; and not only to drive like coachmen, but to talk, walk, dress, drink, swear, and even spit like coachmen. Well, two days after my arrival in London, as I was standing in the street, and looking about, I happened to spit through my teeth, to the envy and admiration of a gentleman that was just driving his own carriage by me. For he stopped, and called me to him, and swore I should get half-a-crown if I would teach him to pickle a wig,—that was the word. So when he gave me plain English for it, I closed with him, and went to his house, and taught him to spit so well, that my fame spread through the town, and all the fashionable bloods came to me for instruction; till at last I had a good mind to set up a Spitting Academy.
'Well, I had now spit myself into such affluence, that I refused a coachman's seat with forty pounds a year (for, as I said, even a curate had more than that); and may be, instead of a seat on the box, I might at last have risen to a seat in the Parliament (for many a man has got there by dirtier tricks than mine), but that my profession, which was of a nature to dry up my mouth, forced me to frequent porterhouses; where, as the devil would have it, I met other gentlemen, such as I had met before, and with just the same set of long words.
'In a short time, all of us agreed that our country was ruined, and that something must be done. So we made ourselves into a club, for the purpose of writing ballads about the war, and the taxes, and a thousand lashes that a soldier got. And we used to set ten or twelve ballad-singers round a table in our club-room, each with her pint of beer; and one of our club would teach them the tune with a little kit, while I was in a cock-loft overhead composing the words. And they reckoned me the best poet of them all; and they told me that my writings would descend to posterity; and sometimes the thoughts came so quick on me, that I was obliged to chalk them down on the back of the bellows. But whenever I wanted an idea, I read the Weekly Register; and then between the Register and the liquor, I got worked up to such a pitch of poetry, that my blood used to run cold in the morning, at the thoughts of what I would have done at night.
'Well, one evening, the ballad-singers were round the table, sipping and singing to the little kit, and I had just popt down my head through the trap-door of the cock-loft, to ask the chairman the rhime for Reform:
'Confound you,' says he, 'didn't I tell you twenty times 'tis a storm;' when in bursts the door, and a parcel of peace-officers seize him, and the whole set, for holding seditious meetings, and publishing inflammatory songs. Think of that! when I protest to you our only object was, by causing disunion, and convincing our enemies that we could not carry on the war, to procure a speedy and honorable peace.
'Howsomever, I got out of the scrape by being concealed in the cock-loft; and I remember well it was on that very night I first saw my wife.'
'Ah,' said I, 'give me the particulars of that event, the first meeting of lovers is always so interesting!'
'Why,' said he, 'going home sorrowful enough after the ruin of our club, I resolved to drown care in a noggin; and accordingly turned into a gin-shop, where I found three fruit-women from Covent Garden, bound on the same errand.'
'What dram shall we drink?' says they.
'Brandy,' says one.