Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/72

62 uſed to call it, being out. I attended at the pay-table every Saturday evening, to take up the little ſum which I had made myſelf anſwerable for; and which amounted to nearly thirty ſhillings a week.

This circumſtance, added to my reputation of being a tolerable good gabber, or, in other words, ſkilful in the art of burleſque, kept up my importance in the chapel. I had beſides recommended myſelf to the eſteem of my maſter by my aſſiduous application to buſineſs, never obſerving Saint Monday. My extraordinary quickneſs in compoſing always procured me ſuch work as was moſt urgent, and which is commonly beſt paid; and thus my time parted away in a very pleaſant manner.

My lodging in Little Britain being too far from the printing-houſe, I took another in Duke-ſtreet oppoſite the Roman Catholic chapel. It was at the back of an Italian warehouſe. The houſe was kept by a widow, who had a daughter, a ſervant, and a ſhop-boy; but the latter ſlept out of the houſe. After ſending to the people with whom I lodged in Little Britain, to enquire into my character, ſhe agreed to take me in at the ſame price, three-and-ſixpence a week; contenting herſelf, ſhe ſaid, with ſo little, becauſe of the ſecurity ſhe ſhould derive, as they were all women, from having a man lodge in the houſe. She was a woman rather advanced in life, the daughter of a clergyman. She had been educated a Proteſtant; but her huſband, whoſe memory ſhe highly revered, had converted her to the Catholic religion. She had lived in habits of intimacy with perſons of diſtinction; of whom ſhe knew various anecdotes as far back as the time of Charles II. Being ſubject to fits of the gout, which often confined her to her room, ſhe was ſometimes diſpoſed to ſee company, Hers