Therefore I am cautious in exercising the right of censorship, which is supposed to be acquired by men arrived at, or approaching, the mysterious period of life, when the numbers of seven and nine multiplied into each other, form what sages have termed the Grand Climacteric.
Of the earlier part of my life it is only necessary to say, that I swept the boards of the Parliament-House with the skirts of my gown for the usual number of years during which young Lairds were in my time expected to keep term--got no fees--laughed, and made others laugh--drank claret at Bayle's, Fortune's, and Walker's--and ate oysters in the Covenant Close.
Becoming my own master, I flung my gown at the bar-keeper, and commenced gay man on my own account.

In Edinburgh, I ran into all the expensive society which the place then afforded.

When I went to my house in the shire of Lanark, I emulated to the utmost the expenses of men of large fortune, and had my hunters, my first-rate pointers, my game-cocks, and feeders.

I can more easily forgive myself for these follies, than for others of a still more blamable kind, so indifferently cloaked over, that my poor mother thought herself obliged to leave my habitation, and betake herself to a small inconvenient jointure-house, which she occupied till her death.

I think, however, I was not exclusively to blame in this separation, and I believe my mother afterwards condemned herself for being too hasty.