_ Chapter II - Containing an account of Mr. Booth's fellow-sufferers.
Before we return to Amelia we must detain our reader a little longer
with Mr. Booth, in the custody of Mr. Bondum the bailiff, who now
informed his prisoner that he was welcome to the liberty of the house
with the other gentlemen.
Booth asked who those gentlemen were. "One of them, sir," says Mr.
Bondum, "is a very great writer or author, as they call him; he hath
been here these five weeks at the suit of a bookseller for eleven
pound odd money; but he expects to be discharged in a day or two, for
he hath writ out the debt. He is now writing for five or six
booksellers, and he will get you sometimes, when he sits to it, a
matter of fifteen shillings a-day. For he is a very good pen, they
say, but is apt to be idle. Some days he won't write above five hours;
but at other times I have know him at it above sixteen." "Ay!" cries
Booth; "pray, what are his productions? What does he write?" "Why,
sometimes," answered Bondum, "he writes your history books for your
numbers, and sometimes your verses, your poems, what do you call them?
and then again he writes news for your newspapers." "Ay, indeed! he is
a most extraordinary man, truly!--How doth he get his news here?" "Why
he makes it, as he doth your parliament speeches for your magazines.
He reads them to us sometimes over a bowl of punch. To be sure it is
all one as if one was in the parliament-house--it is about liberty and
freedom, and about the constitution of England. I say nothing for my
part, for I will keep my neck out of a halter; but, faith, he makes it
out plainly to me that all matters are not as they should be. I am all
for liberty, for my part." "Is that so consistent with your calling?"
cries Booth. "I thought, my friend, you had lived by depriving men of
their liberty." "That's another matter," cries the bailiff; "that's
all according to law, and in the way of business. To be sure, men must
be obliged to pay their debts, or else there would be an end of
everything." Booth desired the bailiff to give him his opinion on
liberty. Upon which, he hesitated a moment, and then cried out, "O
'tis a fine thing, 'tis a very fine thing, and the constitution of
England." Booth told him, that by the old constitution of England he
had heard that men could not be arrested for debt; to which the
bailiff answered, that must have been in very bad times; "because as
why," says he, "would it not be the hardest thing in the world if a
man could not arrest another for a just and lawful debt? besides, sir,
you must be mistaken; for how could that ever be? is not liberty the
constitution of England? well, and is not the constitution, as a man
may say--whereby the constitution, that is the law and liberty, and
all that--"
Booth had a little mercy upon the poor bailiff, when he found him
rounding in this manner, and told him he had made the matter very
clear. Booth then proceeded to enquire after the other gentlemen, his
fellows in affliction; upon which Bondum acquainted him that one of
the prisoners was a poor fellow. "He calls himself a gentleman," said
Bondum; "but I am sure I never saw anything genteel by him. In a week
that he hath been in my house he hath drank only part of one bottle of
wine. I intend to carry him to Newgate within a day or two, if he
can't find bail, which, I suppose, he will not be able to do; for
everybody says he is an undone man. He hath run out all he hath by
losses in business, and one way or other; and he hath a wife and seven
children. Here was the whole family here the other day, all howling
together. I never saw such a beggarly crew; I was almost ashamed to
see them in my house. I thought they seemed fitter for Bridewell than
any other place. To be sure, I do not reckon him as proper company for
such as you, sir; but there is another prisoner in the house that I
dare say you will like very much. He is, indeed, very much of a
gentleman, and spends his money like one. I have had him only three
days, and I am afraid he won't stay much longer. They say, indeed, he
is a gamester; but what is that to me or any one, as long as a man
appears as a gentleman? I always love to speak by people as I find;
and, in my opinion, he is fit company for the greatest lord in the
land; for he hath very good cloaths, and money enough. He is not here
for debt, but upon a judge's warrant for an assault and battery; for
the tipstaff locks up here."
The bailiff was thus haranguing when he was interrupted by the arrival
of the attorney whom the trusty serjeant had, with the utmost
expedition, found out and dispatched to the relief of his distressed
friend. But before we proceed any further with the captain we will
return to poor Amelia, for whom, considering the situation in which we
left her, the good-natured reader may be, perhaps, in no small degree
solicitous.
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