168. I never _dangled_ about at the heels of my wife; seldom, very seldom, ever _walked out_, as it is called, with her; I never 'went _a walking_' in the whole course of my life; never went to walk without having some _object_ in view other than the walk; and, as I never could walk at a slow pace, it would have been _hard work_ for her to keep up with me; so that, in the nearly forty years of our married life, we have not walked out together, perhaps, twenty times. I hate a _dangler_, who is more like a footman than a husband. It is very cheap to be kind in _trifles_; but that which rivets the affections is not to be purchased with money. The great thing of all, however, is to prove your anxiety at those times of peril to her, and for which times you, nevertheless, wish. Upon those occasions I was never from home, be the necessity for it ever so great: it was my rule, that every thing must give way to that. In the year 1809, some English local militiamen were _flogged_, in the Isle of Ely, in England, under a guard of _Hanoverians_, then stationed in England. I, reading an account of this in a London newspaper, called the COURIER, expressed my indignation at it in such terms as it became an Englishman to do. The Attorney General, Gibbs, was set on upon me; he harassed me for nearly a year, then brought me to trial, and I was, by Ellenborough, Grose, Le Blanc, and Bailey, sentenced to _two years' imprisonment_ in Newgate, to pay a fine to _the king_ of _a thousand pounds_, and to be held in heavy bail for _seven years_ after the expiration of the imprisonment! Every one regarded it as a sentence of _death_. I lived in the country at the time, seventy miles from London; I had a farm on my hands; I had a family of small children, amongst whom I had constantly lived; I had a most anxious and devoted wife, who was, too, in that state, which rendered the separation more painful ten-fold. I was put into a place amongst _felons_, from which I had to rescue myself at the price of _twelve guineas a week_ for the whole of the two years. The _King_, poor man! was, at the close of my imprisonment, not _in a condition_ to receive the _thousand pounds_; but his son, the present king, punctually received it _'in his name and behalf_;' and he keeps it still.