But in the beginning of the last century, such a degrading resource was
quite unnecessary. There were always at hand plenty of establishments
where a youth could obtain the necessary funds to pay his tailor, if
fortune favoured him; and if not, he could follow the fashion of the
day, and take to what the Japanese call 'the happy Despatch.' Nash
probably suspected that he had no brains to blow out, and he determined
the more resolutely to make fortune his mistress. He went to the
gaming-table, and turned his one guinea into ten, and his ten into a
hundred, and was soon blazing about in gold lace, and a new sword, the
very delight of dandies.
He had entered his name, by way of excuse, at the Temple, and we can
quite believe that he ate all the requisite dinners, though it is not so
certain that he paid for them. He soon found that a fine coat is not so
very far beneath a good brain in worldly estimation, and when, on the
accession of William the Third, the Templars, according to the old
custom, gave his Majesty a banquet, Nash, as a promising Beau, was
selected to manage the establishment. It was his first experience of the
duties of an M.C., and he conducted himself so ably on this occasion
that the king even offered to make a knight of him.
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