But raillery apart. [All gloom at heart, by Jupiter! although the pen and the countenance assume airs of levity!] If, after all, thou canst so easily repent and reform, as thou thinkest thou canst:  if thou canst thus shake off thy old sins, and thy old habits:  and if thy old master will so readily dismiss so tried and so faithful a servant, and permit thee thus calmly to enjoy thy new system; no room for scandal; all temptation ceasing:  and if at last (thy reformation warranted and approved by time) thou marriest, and livest honest:—­why, Belford, I cannot but say, that if all these IF’s come to pass, thou standest a good chance to be a happy man!

All I think, as I told thee in my last, is, that the devil knows his own interest too well, to let thee off so easily.  Thou thyself tallest me, that we cannot repent when we will.  And indeed I found it so:  for, in my lucid intervals, I made good resolutions:  but as health turned its blithe side to me, and opened my prospects of recovery, all my old inclinations and appetites returned; and this letter, perhaps, will be a thorough conviction to thee, that I am as wild a fellow as ever, or in the way to be so.

Thou askest me, very seriously, if, upon the faint sketch thou hast drawn, thy new scheme be not infinitely preferable to any of those which we have so long pursued?—­Why, Jack—­Let me reflect—­Why, Belford—­I can’t say—­I can’t say—­but it is.  To speak out—­It is really, as Biddy in the play says, a good comfortable scheme.

But when thou tallest me, that it was thy misfortune to love me, because thy value for me made thee a wickeder man than otherwise thou wouldst have been; I desire thee to revolve this assertion:  and I am persuaded that thou wilt not find thyself in so right a train as thou imaginest.

No false colourings, no glosses, does a true penitent aim at.  Debasement, diffidence, mortification, contrition, are all near of a kin, Jack, and inseparable from a repentant spirit.  If thou knowest not this, thou art not got three steps (out of threescore) towards repentance and amendment.  And let me remind thee, before the grand accuser come to do it, that thou wert ever above being a passive follower in iniquity.  Though thou hadst not so good an invention as he to whom thou writest, thou hadst as active an heart for mischief, as ever I met with in man.

Then for improving an hint, thou wert always a true Englishman.  I never started a roguery, that did not come out of thy forge in a manner ready anvilled and hammered for execution, when I have sometimes been at a loss to make any thing of it myself.

What indeed made me appear to be more wicked than thou was, that I being a handsome fellow, and thou an ugly one, when we had started a game, and hunted it down, the poor frighted puss generally threw herself into my paws, rather than into thine:  and then, disappointed, hast thou wiped thy blubber-lips, and marched off to start a new game, calling me a wicked fellow all the while.