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the end of an adventure before we writers can duly prepare him for
it. I am to record that these two brothers began to be
distinguished at this time by certain names. One of them desired to
be called Martin, and the other took the appellation of Jack. These
two had lived in much friendship and agreement under the tyranny of
their brother Peter, as it is the talent of fellow-sufferers to do,
men in misfortune being like men in the dark, to whom all colours
are the same. But when they came forward into the world, and began
to display themselves to each other and to the light, their
complexions appeared extremely different, which the present posture
of their affairs gave them sudden opportunity to discover.
But here the severe reader may justly tax me as a writer of short
memory, a deficiency to which a true modern cannot but of necessity
be a little subject. Because, memory being an employment of the
mind upon things past, is a faculty for which the learned in our
illustrious age have no manner of occasion, who deal entirely with
invention and strike all things out of themselves, or at least by
collision from each other; upon which account, we think it highly
reasonable to produce our great forgetfulness as an argument
unanswerable for our great wit. I ought in method to have informed
the reader about fifty pages ago of a fancy Lord Peter took, and
infused into his brothers, to wear on their coats whatever trimmings
came up in fashion, never pulling off any as they went out of the
mode, but keeping on all together, which amounted in time to a
medley the most antic you can possibly conceive, and this to a
degree that, upon the time of their falling out, there was hardly a
thread of the original coat to be seen, but an infinite quantity of
lace, and ribbands, and fringe, and embroidery, and points (I mean
only those tagged with silver, for the rest fell off). Now this
material circumstance having been forgot in due place, as good
fortune hath ordered, comes in very properly here, when the two
brothers are just going to reform their vestures into the primitive
state prescribed by their father's will.
They both unanimously entered upon this great work, looking
sometimes on their coats and sometimes on the will. Martin laid the
first hand; at one twitch brought off a large handful of points, and
with a second pull stripped away ten dozen yards of fringe. But
when he had gone thus far he demurred a while. He knew very well
there yet remained a great deal more to be done; however, the first
heat being over, his violence began to cool, and he resolved to
proceed more moderately in the rest of the work, having already very
narrowly escaped a swinging rent in pulling off the points, which
being tagged with silver (as we have observed before), the judicious
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