Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. 2 (of 2)

d, disappeared on the morning of the fourth before daylight, carrying with him twenty-seven pounds of silver, in spoons, teapots, and other vessels, the three watches belonging to myself, my nephew, and Abel Snipe, as well as Jonathan's best coat and trousers. Verily, I was confounded at the fellow's ingratitude, and the loss of my valuables, all of which, however, though broken up, it was my good fortune to recover, together with the three watches. The thief himself, being taken, was clapped into jail for a while, and then surrendered to his master, and carried back to bondage; and this stirring up the ch

t large. This being known, the marble-cutters fell into wrath, denounced me as the friend of villany and the enemy of honest industry; and being joined by the shoemakers, who had put me down in their character-book as a patron to none but prison-workmen, and by divers other mechanics that had some grudge of the same kind, they seized upon me, as I stood survey

epped among them, therefore, and addressed them, exhorting them to peace and harmony; and this producing but little effect on them, I upbraided them with breaking the laws, both human and divine, and assured them I would go hunt up the police, to prevent the mischief they meditated. Alas! how ungratefully they used me! There was a man at a distance who was heating a great pot of tar, to pay the bottom of a canal-boat; and just a moment before, a carter had stopped to look on the affray, leaving on the roadside his cart, on which, among other articles of domestic furniture, was an old feather-bed, lying on the top of all. The devil had surely brought these things upon the ground, that his sinful children, the gentlemen of the fancy, might be at no loss how to testify their hatred of humanity. The very combatants themselves were the first to sei

orse, which the driver was cruelly beating. My interference cost me a dip in the basin, the man, who was both savage and strong, pitching me in headlong, and (what I deemed still more provoking) a kick

om the cur also. And, to end this small catalogue of animal ingratitude, I may say, that, within a fortnight after, I was served in the same way by a rat that I strove to liberate from the fangs of m

me few of them, however, I think proper to record; but, to save space, I will clap them into a short list, along with those already mentione

I had taken out of prison,

y-money, because my gentleman

man's workshop, because I asked payment

(out of charity to the latter, who was unfort

my own charity-school, whom I had

t paying them 25 cents per week fo

eepers, and others, for taking part

by the needle-women, for advising them to go int

m I had concealed three days and n

it was suspected) for putting the thief as a

wn back by the stonecutters, for buy

ang of the fancy, whom I exhorte

of suffering, into a gratis soup-house), and with my own soup, by

boat-driver, for rebuking his

the horse for

taking her out of a dog's m

ch I rescued from a cat: i

er calf out of the mire: item, the

alf-skinned eel, by a fishwoman, wh

ed a seven months' life of philanthropy. But there were