Page:History of Charles Jones, the footman (1).pdf/11

 many young fellows have I known, who lived honestly and happily in their native place, come up to London in the hope of higher wages, and therothere [sic] forfeit their integrity, their peace of mind, their health, their character, and souls. Workmen in particular are very fond of getting into large cities, because they think their labour will turn to better account there than in their own villages. They do not consider that in a city, they must give as much for a filthy room, in a filthy house, inhabited by half a dozen families, situated in a close, smoky, dirty street, as in the country would pay the rent of a cottage and a garden. They do not consider the dearness of provisions in a city, the temptations they are under from bad women, wicked company, and the great number of alehouses. In short, I am fully persuaded that a labourer in the country, on a shilling a day, is better off than one in a city on two shillings.

When I came to my place, I found every thing for the first three or four days very smooth and very pleasant; plenty of provisions, plenty of drink, little work, and a very merry servants' hall. But soon the face of things, with respect to me, changed very much, and I underwent a severer temptation than I ever experienced before or since in the whole coursocourse [sic] of my life. I had always hitherto been taught to consider that sobriety, diligence, and piety, were virtues. I therefore never swore, I never got drunk, I never gamed, I went to church as often as I could, I said my prayers night and morning, and on Sunday at least, if not on other days, I read a little in my good old master's Bible. But here I soon found that this was the worst vice I could be guilty of. As soon as they found me out, it seemed to be a trial of skill