The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

'When they come here,' says she, 'we make no difference; the planters

buy them, and they work together in the field till their time is out.

When 'tis expired,' said she, 'they have encouragement given them to

plant for themselves; for they have a certain number of acres of land

allotted them by the country, and they go to work to clear and cure the

land, and then to plant it with tobacco and corn for their own use; and

as the tradesmen and merchants will trust them with tools and clothes

and other necessaries, upon the credit of their crop before it is

grown, so they again plant every year a little more than the year

before, and so buy whatever they want with the crop that is before them.

'Hence, child,' says she, 'man a Newgate-bird becomes a great man, and

we have,' continued she, 'several justices of the peace, officers of

the trained bands, and magistrates of the towns they live in, that have

been burnt in the hand.' She was going on with that part of the story, when her own part in it

interrupted her, and with a great deal of good-humoured confidence she

told me she was one of the second sort of inhabitants herself; that she

came away openly, having ventured too far in a particular case, so that

she was become a criminal. 'And here's the mark of it, child,' says

she; and, pulling off her glove, 'look ye here,' says she, turning up

the palm of her hand, and showed me a very fine white arm and hand, but

branded in the inside of the hand, as in such cases it must be.

This story was very moving to me, but my mother, smiling, said, 'You

need not think a thing strange, daughter, for as I told you, some of

the best men in this country are burnt in the hand, and they are not

ashamed to own it. There's Major ----,' says she, 'he was an eminent

pickpocket; there's Justice Ba----r, was a shoplifter, and both of them

were burnt in the hand; and I could name you several such as they are.' We had frequent discourses of this kind, and abundance of instances she

gave me of the like. After some time, as she was telling some stories

of one that was transported but a few weeks ago, I began in an intimate

kind of way to ask her to tell me something of her own story, which she

did with the utmost plainness and sincerity; how she had fallen into

very ill company in London in her young days, occasioned by her mother

sending her frequently to carry victuals and other relief to a

kinswoman of hers who was a prisoner in Newgate, and who lay in a

miserable starving condition, was afterwards condemned to be hanged,

but having got respite by pleading her belly, dies afterwards in the

prison.