O bear me to the paths of fair Pall Mall,
Safe are thy pavements, grateful is thy smell;
At distance rolls along the gilded coach,
Nor sturdy carmen on thy walks encroach. (1807.)
Miseries of Public Places.—After the play, on a raw, wet night, with a party of ladies, fretting and freezing in the outer lobbies and at the street-doors of the theatre, among chairmen, barrow-women, yelling linkboys, and other human refuse, in endless attempts to find out your servant or carriage, which, when found out at last, cannot be drawn up nearer than a furlong from the door. (January 1, 1807.)
Miseries Miscellaneous.—The necessity of sending a verbal message of the utmost consequence by an ass, who, you plainly perceive, will forget (or rather has already forgotten) every word you have been saying. (January 1, 1807.)
Miseries of Reading and Writing.—As you are writing drowsily by the fire, on rousing and recollecting yourself, find your guardian in possession of your secret thoughts, which he never ceases to upbraid you with. (January 1, 1807.)
Miseries Personal.—When in the gout receiving the ruinous salutation of a muscular friend (a sea captain), who, seizing your hand in the first transports of a sudden meeting, affectionately crumbles your chalky knuckles with the gripe of a grasping-iron, and then further confirms his regard for you by greeting your tenderest toe with the stamp of a charger. (January 1, 1807.)
Miseries of the Country.—While you are out with a walking party, after heavy rains, one shoe suddenly sucked off by the boggy clay, and then, in making a long and desperate stretch (which fails), with the hope of recovering it, the other is left in the same predicament. The second stage of ruin is that of standing, or rather tottering in blank despair, with both bare feet planted ankle-deep in the quagmire. (January 1, 1806.)
Miseries of London.—Chasing your hat (just blown off in a high wind) through a muddy street—a fresh gust always whisking it away at the moment of seizing it; when you have at last caught it deliberately putting it on, with all its sins upon your head, amidst the jeers of the populace. (January 1, 1807.)
Miseries of Travelling. 'O Miserabile mihi.' Published by T. Rowlandson, Adelphi.—A restive horse in a gig backing into the windows of a potter's shop; alarmed at the terrific crash, you become panic-struck, with the perspiration starting from every pore. (April 12, 1807.)
Miseries of Travelling.—Being mounted on a beast who, as soon as you have watered him on the road, proceeds very coolly to repose himself in the middle of the pond, without taking you at all into his counsel or paying the slightest attention to your remonstrances. (1807.)