They lite the candle at both ends. Here's nothing but ginketting, and wasting, and thieving, and tricking, and trigging; and then they are never content. They won't suffer the squire and mistress to stay any longer, because they have been already above three weeks in the house, and they look for a couple of guineas a-piece at our going away; and this is a parquisite they expect every month in the season, being as how no family has a right to stay longer than four weeks in the same lodgings; and so the cuck swears she will pin the dish-clout to mistress's tail, and the house-maid vows she'll put cow-itch in master's bed, if so be he don't discamp without furder ado. I don't blame them for making the most of their market, in the way of vails and parquisites; and I defy the devil to say I am a tail-carrier, or ever brought a poor sarvant into trouble-but then they oft to have some conscience, in vronging those that be sarvants like themselves; for you must know, Molly, I missed three quarters of blond lace, and a remnant of muslin, and my silver thimble, which was the gift of true love. They were all in my work basket, that I left upon the table in the sarvants hall, when mistress's bell rung; but if they had been under lock and kay, 'twould have been all the same, for there are double kays to all the locks in Bath; and they say as how the very teeth an't safe in your head, if you sleep with your mouth open: and so, says I to myself, them things could not go without hands, and so I'll watch their

waters; and so I did with a vitness; for then it was I found Bett consarned with O Frizzle. And as the cuck had thrown her slush at me, because I had taken part with Chowder, when he fit with the turnspit, I resolved to make a clear kitchen, and throw some of her fat into the fire. I ketched the chare-woman going out with her load in the morning, before she thought I was up, and brought her to mistress with her whole cargo. Marry, what do'st think she had got, in the name of God? Her buckets were foaming full of our best beer, and her lap was stuffed with a cold tongue, part of a buttock of beef, half a turkey, and a swinging lump of butter, and the matter of ten moulded kandles, that had scarce ever been lit. The cuck brazened it out, and said, it was her rite to rummage the pantry, and she was ready for to go before the mare; that he had been her potticary many years, and would never think of hurting a poor sarvant, for giving away the scraps of the kitchen. I went another way to work with Madam Betty, because she had been saucy, and called me skandelus names, and said O Frizzle couldn't abide me, and twenty other odorous falsehoods. I got a varrant from the mare, and her box being sarched by the constable, my things came out sure enuff; besides a full pound of vax candles, and a nite-cap of mistress, that I could sware to on my cruperal oaf.-O! then Madam Mopstic came upon her merrybones, and, as the squire wouldn't hare of a pursecution, she escaped a skewering; but, the 113

VOL. I.

I

longest day she has to live, she'll remember your

humble servant,

WINIFRED JENKINS.

BATH, MAY 15.

If the hind should come again, before we be gone, pray, send me the shift and apron, with the vite gallow manky shoes, which you'll find in my pillober.— Sarvice to Saul.

TO SIR WATKIN PHILLIPS, BART,

OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXON.

You are in the right, dear Phillips; I don't expect regular answers to every letter-I know a college-life is too circumscribed to afford materials for such quick returns of communication. For my part, I am continually shifting the scene, and surrounded with new objects, some of which are striking enough. I shall therefore conclude my journal for your amusement; and though, in all appearance, it will not treat of very important or interesting particulars, it may prove, perhaps, not altogether uninstructive and unentertaining.

The music and entertainments of Bath are over for this season; and all our gay birds of passage have taken their flight to Bristol-well, Tunbridge, Brighthelmstone, Scarborough, Harrowgate, &c. Not a soul

is seen in this place, but a few broken-winded parsons, waddling like so many crows along the North Parade. There is always a great shew of the clergy at Bath; none of your thin, puny, yellow, hectic figures, exhausted with abstinence and hard study, labouring under the morbi eruditorum; but great overgrown dignitaries and rectors, with rubicund noses and gouty ankles, or broad bloated faces, dragging along great swag bellies, the emblems of sloth and indigestion.

Now we are upon the subject of parsons, I must tell you a ludicrous adventure, which was achieved the other day by Tom Eastgate, whom you may remember on the foundation of Queen's. He had been very assiduous to pin himself upon George Prankley, who was a gentleman commoner of Christ-Church, knowing the said Prankley was heir to a considerable estate, and would have the advowson of a good living, the incumbent of which was very old and infirm. He studied his passions, and flattered them so effectually, as to become his companion and counsellor, and at last obtained of him a promise of the presentation, when the living should fall. Prankley, on his uncle's death, quitted Oxford, and made his first appearance in the fashionable world at London, from whence he came lately to Bath, where he has been exhibiting himself among the bucks and gamesters of the place. Eastgate followed him hither; but he should not have quitted him for a moment, at his first emerging into

life. He ought to have known he was a fantastic, foolish, fickle fellow, who would forget his college attachments the moment they ceased appealing to his senses. Tom met with a cold reception from his old friend; and was, moreover, informed, that he had promised the living to another man, who had a vote in the county where he proposed to offer himself a candidate at the next general election. He now remembered nothing of Eastgate, but the freedoms he had used to take with him, while Tom had quietly stood his butt, with an eye to the benefice; and those freedoms he began to repeat in common-place sarcasms on his person and his cloth, which he uttered in the public coffee-house, for the entertainment of the company. But he was egregiously mistaken in giving his own wit credit for that tameness of Eastgate, which had been entirely owing to prudential considerations. These being now removed, he retorted his repartee with interest, and found no great difficulty in turning the laugh upon the aggressor; who, losing his temper, called him names, and asked, If he knew whom he talked to? After much altercation, Prankley, shaking his cane, bid him hold his tongue, otherwise he would dust his cassock for him. "I have no pretensions to such a valet," said Tom, "but if you should do me that office, and overheat yourself, I have here a good oaken towel at your service."

Prankley was equally incensed and confounded at