any selfish views, prevent me from partaking in the pleasure, his being able to affift his fellow creature feemed to give him.

CHAP. VII.

An account of an amazing, wonderful, uncommon infrument.

A

FTER paffing thro' the hands of fix or seven fellows, whofe phizzes I had hardly time to furvey, I was paid to a fharp-looking, flim animal, to whom his neighbours had given the name of John the Ratcatcher.

John ***, furnamed the Ratcatcher, is an honeft toyman at this end

VOL. IV.

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of

of the town, and a very great genius in his way; but non omnibus, &c. he is fuch an excellent hand at procuring patents, that he has got one for the fole direction of people's fingers in the dark, when the thoughts of any particular affair ftrikes them*. Whether his majefty's patent fays, that they shan't know, without John's inftrument, if they are in the right place or not, I won't pretend to affert, having never read the royal piece of parchment; but I know, if I was a king, and poffeffed of that power, I would never have granted it away to any fubject whatever, but have the directing

*This, we may judge, may allude to a patent fomebody, took out for an inftrument to direct his majefty's good fubjects, where to carry their fingers, to make memorandums in the night.

directing of people's fingers myself. -Feeling is a very nice affair; and nobody fhould feel for me, if I was a king; at leaft, as long as my own fenfe of feeling lafted, which, I hope, will be both his majefty's cafe and mine feventy years longer at leaft.

Whether John outwitted his maf ter, or not, in gaining fuch a patent, by reprefenting matters as the lawyers do in Weftminster-hall, in a quite different light from what they ought to be; or his M- -y did it out of the regard he bears to John's fharp phiz; or the clerks did it, for the fake of an article, called ready money, (for which aforefaid article, I am told, if you defire it, they will draw you out a patent, for the fole occupying of grazing farms in the F 2 fky,

fky,) I know not; but certain it is, that if you pay John only the fum of five fhillings for his inftrument; when you have had your fingers at any certain place, if in an hour's time, or two or three, no matter which, the fame thought, or fomething bordering upon it, should strike you again, by the help of this said instrument of John's, and a little groping into the bargain, you may guefs almoft to a certainty, whether you are in the very individual place, or an inch higher or lower than where you groped laft; then, if you have your pencil in your hand, or your pen full of ink, you may fall to work directly. I own I fhould like to work with my pen full of ink, because the effects of fuch memorandums often appear for fifty or fixty years after; whereas the

work

work of a dry pencil, like Solomon's of a man with a maid, leaves no traces behind it.

way

I cannot forbear obferving, that if this inftrument was the invention of the John I am speaking of, or any other John, that he has been very fhort in his recommendation of it; or, as the malign part of the world are pleased to nickname it, puffing it off; for, if it be useful to make feeing people write in the dark, it fure can direct blind people to write in the day time; as nobody can deny, but they are in the dark, asleep or awake this is a hint I give this John, or the proper John, whoever he is, out of pure good-will to all enterprising geniuses, and defire he will not fail to enlarge upon fo fhining a discovery,

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