_Sir Per_. Then, sir, as the greatest favour I can confer upon you, I'll give you a short sketch of the stages of my bowing,--as an excitement, and a landmark for you to bow be--and as an infallible nostrum to rise in the world.
_Eger_. Sir, I shall be proud to profit by your experience.
_Sir Per_. Vary weel, sir: sit ye down then, sit you down here: _[They sit down_.]--and now, sir, you must recall to your thoughts, that your grandfather was a man, whose penurious income of half pay was the sum total of his fortune;--and, sir, aw my provision fra him was a modicum of Latin, an expertness in arithmetic, and a short system of worldly counsel; the principal ingredients of which were, a persevering industry, a rigid economy, a smooth tongue, a pliability of temper, and a constant attention to make every man well pleased with himself.
_Sir Per_. Therefore, sir, I lay it before you.--Now, sir, with these materials I set out a raw-boned stripling fra the north, to try my fortune with them here in the south; and my first step intill the world was, a beggarly clerkship in Sawney Gordon's counting house, here in the city of London, which you'll say afforded but a barren sort of a prospect.
_Eger_. It was not a very fertile one indeed, sir.
_Sir Per_. The reverse, the reverse: weel, sir, seeing myself in this unprofitable situation, I reflected deeply; I cast about my thoughts morning, noon, and night, and markt every man and every mode of prosperity,--at last I concluded that a matrimonial adventure, prudently conducted, would be the readiest gait I could gang for the bettering of my condition, and accordingly I set about it: now, sir, in this pursuit, beauty! beauty!--ah! beauty often struck mine een, and played about my heart! and fluttered, and beat, and knocked, and knocked, but the devil an entrance I ever let it get;--for I observed, sir, that beauty--is generally--a proud, vain, saucy, expensive, impertinent sort of a commodity.
_Sir Per_. And therefore, sir, I left it to prodigals and coxcombs, that could afford to pay for it; and in its stead, sir, mark! I looked out for an ancient, weel-jointured, superannuated dowager:--a consumptive, toothless, ptisicky, wealthy widow,--or a shrivelled, cadaverous piece of deformity in the shape of an izzard, or a appersi-and,--or, in short, ainy thing, ainy thing that had the siller, the siller,--for that, sir, was the north star of my affections. Do you take me, sir; was nai that right?