He seemed very much surprised, and said, he was sure I was not a foreigner.

I made no reply, but left him upon the tenter-hooks of impatient uncertainty.

He could not contain his anxiety, but asked pardon for the liberties he had taken and, to encourage me the more to disclose my situation, displayed his own without reserve.
"I am," said he, "a single man, have a considerable annuity, on which I live according to my inclination, and make the ends of the year meet very comfortably.

As I have no estate to leave behind, I am not troubled with the importunate officiousness of relations or legacy hunters, and I consider the world as made for me, not me for the world.

It is my maxim, therefore, to enjoy it while I can, and let futurity shift for itself." While he thus indulged his own talkative vein, and at the same time, no doubt, expected retaliation from me, a young man entered, dressed in black velvet and an enormous tie-wig, with an air in which natural levity and affected solemnity were so jumbled together, that on the whole he appeared a burlesque on all decorum.