wicked, even for me. There was something horrid and absurd
in their way of sinning, for it was all a force even upon
themselves; they did not only act against conscience, but
against nature; they put a rape upon their temper to drown the
reflections, which their circumstances continually gave them;
and nothing was more easy than to see how sighs would
interrupt their songs, and paleness and anguish sit upon their
brows, in spite of the forced smiles they put on; nay, sometimes
it would break out at their very mouths when they had parted
with their money for a lewd treat or a wicked embrace. I have
heard them, turning about, fetch a deep sigh, and cry, ‘What a
dog am I! Well, Betty, my dear, I’ll drink thy health, though’;
meaning the honest wife, that perhaps had not a half-crown
for herself and three or four children. The next morning they
are at their penitentials again; and perhaps the poor weeping
wife comes over to him, either brings him some account of
what his creditors are doing, and how she and the children are
turned out of doors, or some other dreadful news; and this
adds to his self-reproaches; but when he has thought and pored
on it till he is almost mad, having no principles to support him,
nothing within him or above him to comfort him, but finding
it all darkness on every side, he flies to the same relief again,
viz. to drink it away, debauch it away, and falling into
company of men in just the same condition with himself, he
repeats the crime, and thus he goes every day one step
onward of his way to destruction.
I was not wicked enough for such fellows as these yet. On
the contrary, I began to consider here very seriously what I
had to do; how things stood with me, and what course I ought
to take. I knew I had no friends, no, not one friend or relation
in the world; and that little I had left apparently wasted, which
when it was gone, I saw nothing but misery and starving was
before me. Upon these considerations, I say, and filled with
horror at the place I was in, and the dreadful objects which I
had always before me, I resolved to be gone.
I had made an acquaintance with a very sober, good sort of a
woman, who was a widow too, like me, but in better circumstances.
Her husband had been a captain of a merchant ship, and having
had the misfortune to be cast away coming home on a voyage
from the West Indies, which would have been very profitable
if he had come safe, was so reduced by the loss, that though
he had saved his life then, it broke his heart, and killed him
afterwards; and his widow, being pursued by the creditors, was
forced to take shelter in the Mint. She soon made things up
with the help of friends, and was at liberty again; and finding
that I rather was there to be concealed, than by any particular
prosecutions and finding also that I agreed with her, or rather
she with me, in a just abhorrence of the place and of the
company, she invited to go home with her till I could put
myself in some posture of settling in the world to my mind;
withal telling me, that it was ten to one but some good captain
of a ship might take a fancy to me, and court me, in that part
of the town where she lived.
I accepted her offer, and was with her half a year, and should
have been longer, but in that interval what she proposed to me
happened to herself, and she married very much to her advantage.
But whose fortune soever was upon the increase, mine seemed
to be upon the wane, and I found nothing present, except two
or three boatswains, or such fellows, but as for the commanders,
they were generally of two sorts: 1. Such as, having good
business, that is to say, a good ship, resolved not to marry
but with advantage, that is, with a good fortune; 2. Such as,