His profession accustomed him to a certain
degree of indifference to consequences, and indulgence to the sallies of
passion; and he might easily have found his opportunity to insult or
injure me, when I should have had nothing but my own debilitated
exertions to protect me.
Freed from this danger, I found my situation sufficiently fortunate for
a man under my circumstances. It was attended with all the advantages
for concealment my fondest imagination could have hoped; and it was by
no means destitute of the benefits which arise from kindness and
humanity. Nothing could be more unlike than the thieves I had seen
in ---- jail, and the thieves of my new residence. The latter were
generally full of cheerfulness and merriment. They could expatiate
freely wherever they thought proper. They could form plans and execute
them. They consulted their inclinations. They did not impose upon
themselves the task, as is too often the case in human society, of
seeming tacitly to approve that from which they suffered most; or, which
is worst, of persuading themselves that all the wrongs they suffered
were right; but were at open war with their oppressors.
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