Page:History of Charles Jones, the footman (2).pdf/11

11 besides myself. If country people knew London as well as I do, how cautious would they be for exchanging their safe and peaceful situations in the country for the perils and temptations of a great city. How 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 there 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, smokey, 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 se verer temptation than I ever experienced before or since in the whole course of my life. I had always hitherto been taught to consider that sobriety, and