Oh, dear me, no!
My lord gets into the valorous British army, where cowardice--Oh,
dear me!--is a thing almost entirely unknown; and being on the
field of Waterloo the day before the battle, falls off his horse,
and, pretending to be hurt in the back, gets himself put on the
sick list--a pretty excuse--hurting his back--for not being present
at such a fight. Old Benbow, after part of both his legs had been
shot away in a sea-fight, made the carpenter make him a cradle to
hold his bloody stumps, and continued on deck, cheering his men
till he died. Jack returns home, and gets into trouble, and having
nothing to subsist by but his wits, gets his living by the ring and
the turf, doing many an odd kind of thing, I dare say, but not half
those laid to his charge. My lord does much the same without the
excuse for doing so which Jack had, for he had plenty of means, is
a leg, and a black, only in a more polished way, and with more
cunning, and I may say success, having done many a rascally thing
never laid to his charge. Jack at last cuts the throat of a
villain who had cheated him of all he had in the world, and who, I
am told, was in many points the counterpart of this screw and white
feather, is taken up, tried, and executed; and certainly taking
away a man's life is a dreadful thing; but is there nothing as bad?
Whitefeather will cut no person's throat--I will not say who has
cheated him, for, being a cheat himself, he will take good care
that nobody cheats him, but he'll do something quite as bad; out of
envy to a person who never injured him, and whom he hates for being
more clever and respected than himself, he will do all he possibly
can, by backbiting and every unfair means, to do that person a
mortal injury.
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