Bickerstaff, don't believe a word of what he tells
you. I shall still live to have you for my second, as I have
often promised you, unless he takes more care of himself than he
has done since his coming to town. You must know, he tells me,
that he finds London is a much more healthy place than the
country, for he sees several of his old acquaintance and school-
fellows are here, young fellows with fair, full-bottomed
periwigs. I could scarce keep him this morning from going out
open-breasted.'" And so they sat and chatted pleasantly until,
"on a sudden, we were alarmed with the noise of a drum, and
immediately entered my little godson to give me a point of war.*
His mother, between laughing and chiding, would have put him out
of the room, but I would not part with him so. I found, upon
conversation with him, though he was a little noisy in his mirth,
that the child had excellent parts, and was a great master of all
the learning on the other side of eight years old. I perceived
him to be a very great historian in Aesop's Fables; but he frankly
declared to me his mind, that he did not delight in that
learning, because he did not believe they were true.
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