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Captain James Hind excited considerable interest in his time; his father was a saddler, an inhabitant of Chipping-Norton in Oxfordshire, where the captain was born. The old man lived there many years in very good reputation among his neighbours, was an honest companion, and a constant churchman. As James was his only son, he was willing to give him the best education he was able, and to that purpose sent him to school till he was fifteen years of age, in which time he learned to read and write very well, and knew arithmetic enough to make him capable of any common business.

After this he was put apprentice to a butcher in his native town, where he served about two years of his time, and then ran away from his master, who was a very morose man, and continually finding something or another to quarrel with him about.

When he made this elopement, he applied immediately to his mother for money to carry him up to London, telling her of the hardships he suffered from his master's severity. She therefore very tenderly supplied him with three pounds for his expences, and sent him with tears in her eyes.

He had not been long in London before he got a relish of the pleasures of the place, which, as far as his circumstances would allow, he pursued very earnestly. One night he was taken in company with a woman of the town, who had just before picked a gentleman's pocket of five guineas, and sent with her to the Poultry Compter till morning, when he was released for want of any evidence against him, he having, in reality, no hand in the affair. The woman was committed to Newgate, but what became of her afterwards we are not certain, nor does it all concern us. The captain by this accident fell into company with one Thomas Allen, a noted highwayman, who had been put into the Compter upon suspicion of some robbery, and was released at the same time with Hind, and for the same reason. These two