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, and gambling, 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.