Oh, Sir Harry! Fortune has acted miracles to-day: the story's strange and tedious, but all amounts to this—that woman's mind is charming as her person, and I am made a convert too to beauty.
Sir H. I wanted only this, to make my pleasure perfect.
Enter Smuggler.
Smug. So, gentlemen and ladies, I'm glad to find you so merry; is my gracious nephew among ye?
Sir H. Sir, he dares not show his face among such honourable company; for your gracious nephew is—
Smug. What, sir? Have a care what you say.
Sir H. A villain, sir.
Smug. With all my heart. I'll pardon you the beating me, for that very word. And pray, Sir Harry, when you see him next, tell him this news from me, that I have disinherited him—that I will leave him as poor as a disbanded quarter-master.—Oh, Sir Harry, he is as hypocritical——
Lady L. As yourself, Mr. Alderman. How fares my good old nurse, pray, sir?——Come, Mr. Alderman, for once let a woman advise:—Would you be thought an honest man, banish covetousness, that worst gout of age: avarice is a poor pilfering quality, of the soul, and will, as certainly cheat, as a thief would steal. Would you be thought a reformer of the times, be less severe in your censures, less rigid in your precepts, and more strict in your example.
Sir H. Right, madam, virtue flows freer from imitation than compulsion; of which, colonel, your conversion and mine, are just examples.