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Updated: May 7, 2025
Well, I went home in my new waistcoat as fine as a peacock; and when I gave the bottle-screw to my father, begging him to take it as a token of my affection for him, my dear mother burst into such a fit of tears as I never saw, and kissed and hugged me fit to smother me. "Bless him, bless him," says she, "to think of his old father. And where did you purchase it, Bob?"
Letter after letter did he send them, full of such reminders as that "they have bad pins and vile needles here," that it would be advisable to bring with them a strong bottle-screw, and a good stout copper tea-kettle; till at last, in the final words of preparation, his language assumes something of the solemnity of a general addressing his army on the eve of a well-nigh desperate enterprise: "Pluck up your spirits trust in God, in me, and yourselves; with this, was you put to it, you would encounter all these difficulties ten times told.
Whilst the chaplain was busy in his ejaculations, Wild, in the midst of the shower of stones, etc., which played upon him, true to his character, applied his hands to the parson's pocket, and emptied it of his bottle-screw, which he carried out of the world in his hand.
I made him, besides giving me a penny for a penny, pay me a quarter of his bread and butter at breakfast and a quarter of his cheese at supper; and before the half-year was out, I got from him a silver fruit-knife, a box of compasses, and a very pretty silver-laced waistcoat, in which I went home as proud as a king: and, what's more, I had no less than three golden guineas in the pocket of it, besides fifteen shillings, the knife, and a brass bottle-screw, which I got from another chap.
Thank thee, my boy: and here is a crown-piece in return for thy bottle-screw it shall open us a bottle of the very best too," says my father. And he kept his word. The best of it was, it only cost me threepence originally, which a chap could not pay me. Seeing this game was such a good one, I became very generous towards my parents; and a capital way it is to encourage liberality in children.
And if in his uncultured youth the great man stooped to prig with his own hand, he was early cured of the weakness: so that Fielding's picture of the hero taking a bottle-screw from the Ordinary's pocket in the very moment of death is entirely fanciful. For 'this Machiavel of Thieves, as a contemporary styled him, left others to accomplish what his ingenuity had planned.
The preposterous Fable goes on to say that quickly mastering my Drill, and being a favourite with my officers, whom I much pleased with my Alacrity and Intelligence, although they were much given to laugh at my assumptions of superior Birth, and nicknamed me "Gentleman Jack," I was promoted to the rank of Corporal, and might have aspired to the dignity of a Sergeant's Halbert, but that in a Mad Frolic one night I betook myself to the road as a Footpad, and robbed a Gentleman, coming from the King's Arms, Kensington, towards the Weigh House at Knightsbridge, of fourteen spade guineas, a gold watch, and a bottle-screw.
"And for all your tobacco, and for all your spices, and for all your slaves, and for all your oxen and asses, and for everything that is yours." "Shall we begin now? Jack, you are never without a dice-box or a bottle-screw. I will set Mr. Warrington for what he likes." "Unfortunately, my lord, the tobacco, and the slaves, and the asses, and the oxen, are not mine, as yet.
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