Why did I not follow your advice, so often given me?
Why did I linger in the neighbourhood of a danger, of which a kind voice had warned me?
These are now unavailing questions; I was blinded by a fatality, and remained, fluttering like a moth around the candle, until I have been scorched to some purpose.
The greater part of the day had passed, and time hung heavy on my hands.
I ought, perhaps, to blush at recollecting what has been often objected to me by the dear friend to whom this letter is addressed, viz.

the facility with which I have, in moments of indolence, suffered my motions to be, directed by any person who chanced to be near me, instead of taking the labour of thinking or deciding for myself.

I had employed for some time, as a sort of guide and errand-boy, a lad named Benjamin, the son of one widow Coltherd, who lives near the Shepherd's Bush, and I cannot but remember that, upon several occasions, I had of late suffered him to possess more influence over my motions than at all became the difference of our age and condition.

At present, he exerted himself to persuade me that it was the finest possible sport to see the fish taken out from the nets placed in the Solway at the reflux of the tide, and urged my going thither this evening so much, that, looking back on the whole circumstances, I cannot but think he had some especial motive for his conduct.

These particulars I have mentioned, that if these papers fall into friendly hands, the boy may be sought after and submitted to examination.
His eloquence being unable to persuade me that I should take any pleasure in seeing the fruitless struggles of the fish when left in the nets and deserted by the tide, he artfully suggested, that Mr.and Miss Geddes, a respectable Quaker family well known in the neighbourhood and with whom I had contracted habits of intimacy, would possibly be offended if I did not make them an early visit.