12.  And how could you write with such thin paper? (I forgot to say this in my former.) Cannot you get thicker?  Why, that’s a common caution that writing-masters give their scholars; you must have heard it a hundred times.  ’Tis this: 

     “If paper be thin,
      Ink will slip in;
      But, if it be thick,
      You may write with a stick."[5]

I had a letter to-day from poor Mrs. Long,[6] giving me an account of her present life, obscure in a remote country town, and how easy she is under it.  Poor creature! ’tis just such an alteration in life, as if Presto should be banished from MD, and condemned to converse with Mrs. Raymond.  I dined to-day with Ford, Sir Richard Levinge,[7] etc., at a place where they board, hard by.  I was lazy, and not very well, sitting so long with company yesterday.  I have been very busy writing this evening at home, and had a fire:  I am spending my second half-bushel of coals; and now am in bed, and ’tis late.

13.  I dined to-day in the City, and then went to christen Will Frankland’s[8] child; and Lady Falconbridge[9] was one of the godmothers:  this is a daughter of Oliver Cromwell, and extremely like him by his pictures that I have seen.  I stayed till almost eleven, and am now come home and gone to bed.  My business in the City was, to thank Stratford for a kindness he has done me, which now I will tell you.  I found Bank Stock was fallen thirty-four in the hundred, and was mighty desirous to buy it; but I was a little too late for the cheapest time, being hindered by business here; for I was so wise to guess to a day when it would fall.  My project was this:  I had three hundred pounds in Ireland; and so I writ to Mr. Stratford in the City, to desire he would buy me three hundred pounds in Bank Stock, and that he should keep the papers, and that I would be bound to pay him for them; and, if it should rise or fall, I would take my chance, and pay him interest in the meantime.  I showed my letter to one or two people who understand those things; and they said money was so hard to be got here, that no man would do it for me.  However, Stratford, who is the most generous man alive, has done it:  but it costs one hundred pounds and a half, that is, ten shillings; so that three hundred pounds cost me three hundred pounds and thirty shillings.  This was done about a week ago, and I can have five pounds for my bargain already.  Before it fell, it was one hundred and thirty pounds; and we are sure it will be the same again.  I told you I writ to your mother, to desire that Lady Giffard would do the same with what she owes you; but she tells your mother she has no money.  I would to God all you had in the world was there.  Whenever you lend money, take this rule, to have two people bound, who have both visible fortunes; for they will hardly die together; and, when one dies, you fall upon the other, and make him add another security:  and if Rathburn (now