Excerpt from Sketches From Life, Vol. 2 of 3: By the Late Laman Blanchard; With a Memoir of the Author The great powers that govern alike the destinies Of keyholes and kings, may be supposed to have little favoured me. It was certam not my fate to be cut in solid fine mahogany, or glorious Old oak to be fashioned in any substance resembling ebony, ivory, or mother Of pearl; to be wrought in the precious metals, or even to be encircled and set Off with fanciful orna ments, bronze or gilt: I have heard of silver keys, but no key Of that kind ever came near me. I cannot boast of being the medium Of a statesman's entrance to his study, or Of a beauty's entrance to her boudoir. Plain uses and plain appearances are all I pretend to. I am as far removed however from the gloomy hovel Of one district as from the gloomier hell Of another; and I ever thanked fortune, from the moment when the air Of heaven first found a clear passage through me, for having placed me among the middle classes; neither in a parish-union nor a palace; neither in a miser's chest nor a church door not so high up as the garret Of a philosopher, nor SO low down as the cellar of a five-bottle blockhead neither in the prison Of an honest debtor, nor in a grinding usurer's country-box. I may add, if a little more breath may be allowed me on this point, that although it is the luck of one key hole to be cut in the door Of a harem, and of another in the door Of a green-room while this has its lot in the gate of the foundling-hospital, and a second gapes in the door Of some sworn bachelor's cold and comfortless dormitory; these Opposite situations, abounding as they may with the means of gratifying curiosity, and awakening moral reflections, are in truth anything but enviable. TO a keyhole Of a sensitive turn a post in a quiet private family' is the most desirable: at a distance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.