"Having therefore effectually disguised myself by a change of dress,
and a large patch on one eye, I hired an equipage, and appeared at
Bologna in quality of an itinerant physician; in which capacity I
succeeded tolerably well, till my servants decamped in the night
with my baggage, and left me in the condition of Adam. In short,
I have travelled over the greatest part of Europe, as a beggar,
pilgrim, priest, soldier, gamester, and quack; and felt the extremes
of indigence and opulence, with the inclemency of weather in all
its vicissitudes. I have learned that the characters of mankind
are everywhere the same; that common sense and honesty bear an
infinitely small proportion to folly and vice; and that life is at
best a paltry province.
"After having suffered innumerable hardships, dangers, and disgraces,
I returned to London, where I lived some years in a garret, and
picked up a subsistence, such as it was, by vending purges in the
streets, from the back of a pied horse, in which situation I used
to harangue the mob in broken English, under pretence of being an
High German doctor.
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