At the same time that I am endeavouring to expose this Weakness in others, I shall readily confess that I once laboured under the same Infirmity myself.  The Method I took to conquer it was a firm Resolution to learn something from whatever I was obliged to see or hear.  There is a way of Thinking if a Man can attain to it, by which he may strike somewhat out of any thing.  I can at present observe those Starts of good Sense and Struggles of unimproved Reason in the Conversation of a Clown, with as much Satisfaction as the most shining Periods of the most finished Orator; and can make a shift to command my Attention at a Puppet-Show or an Opera, as well as at Hamlet or Othello.  I always make one of the Company I am in; for though I say little myself, my Attention to others, and those Nods of Approbation which I never bestow unmerited, sufficiently shew that I am among them.  Whereas WILL.  HONEYCOMB, tho’ a Fellow of good Sense, is every Day doing and saying an hundred Things which he afterwards confesses, with a well-bred Frankness, were somewhat mal a propos, and undesigned.

I chanced the other Day to go into a Coffee-house, where WILL, was standing in the midst of several Auditors whom he had gathered round him, and was giving them an Account of the Person and Character of Moll Hinton.  My Appearance before him just put him in mind of me, without making him reflect that I was actually present.  So that keeping his Eyes full upon me, to the great Surprize of his Audience, he broke off his first Harangue, and proceeded thus: 

’Why now there’s my Friend (mentioning me by my Name) he is a Fellow that thinks a great deal, but never opens his Mouth; I warrant you he is now thrusting his short Face into some Coffee-house about ’Change.  I was his Bail in the time of the Popish-Plot, when he was taken up for a Jesuit.’

If he had looked on me a little longer, he had certainly described me so particularly, without ever considering what led him into it, that the whole Company must necessarily have found me out; for which Reason, remembering the old Proverb, Out of Sight out of Mind, I left the Room; and upon meeting him an Hour afterwards, was asked by him, with a great deal of Good-humour, in what Part of the World I had lived, that he had not seen me these three Days.

Monsieur Bruyere has given us the Character of an absent Man [2], with a great deal of Humour, which he has pushed to an agreeable Extravagance; with the Heads of it I shall conclude my present Paper.