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 was satisfied that it was above a captain: so universally is ambition seated in the minds of men, that not a beggar-boy but has his share of it.

So here was colonel Jack, and captain Jack; as for the third boy, he was only plain Jack for some years after, till he came to preferment by the merit of his birth, as you shall hear in its place.

We were hopeful boys all three of us, and promised very early, by many repeated circumstances of our lives, that we would all be rogues; and yet I cannot say, if what I have heard of my nurse's character be true, but the honest woman did what she could to prevent it.

Before I tell you much more of our story, it would be very proper to give you something of our several characters, as I have gathered them up in my memory, as far back as I can recover things, either of myself, or my brother Jacks, and they shall be brief and impartial.

Captain Jack was the eldest of us all, by a whole year. He was a squat, big, strong made boy, and promised to be stout when grown up to be a man, but not to be tall. His temper was sly, sullen, reserved, malicious, revengeful; and withal, he was brutish, bloody, and cruel in his disposition; he was as to manners a mere boor, or clown, of a carman-like breed; sharp as a street-bred-boy must be, but ignorant and unteachable from a child. He