When I want material for this paper, it is my custom to go abroad in
quest of game; and when I meet any proper subject, I take the first
opportunity of setting down a hint of it upon paper. At the same time,
I look into the letters of my correspondents, and if I find anything
suggested in them that may afford matter of speculation, I likewise
enter a minute of it in my collection of materials. By this means I
frequently carry about with me a whole sheetful of hints, that would
look like a rhapsody of nonsense to anyone but myself. There is nothing
in them but obscurity and confusion, raving and inconsistency. In
short, they are my speculations in the first principles, that (like the
world in its chaos) are void of all light, distinction and order.
About a week since, there happened to me a very odd accident, by reason
of one of these my papers of minutes which I had accidentally dropped
at Lloyd’s coffee house, where the auctions are usually kept. Before
I missed it, there was a cluster of people who had found it, and were
diverting themselves with it at one end of the coffee house. It had
raised so much laughter among them before I had observed what they were
about, that I had not the courage to own it. The boy of the coffee
house, when they had done with it, carried it about in his hand, asking
everybody if they had dropped a written paper; but nobody challenging
it, he was ordered by those merry gentlemen who had before perused it,
to get up into the auction pulpit, and read it to the whole room, that
if anyone would own it, they might. The boy accordingly mounted the
pulpit, and with a very audible voice read as follows: