I was subject to the whims and caprice of those
whom I solicited on these occasions[A]; to these I was obliged to
accommodate myself. When at Edinburgh, a person who could have given me
material information declined seeing me, though he really wished well to
the cause; when I had returned southward as far as York, he changed his
mind, and he would then see me; I went back that I might not lose him.
When I arrived, he would give me only private information. Thus I
travelled, backwards and forwards, four hundred miles to no purpose. At
another place a circumstance almost similar happened, though with a
different issue. I had been for two years writing about a person, whose
testimony was important. I had passed once through the town in which he
lived, but he would not then see me; I passed through it now, but no
entreaties of his friends could make him alter his resolution. He was a
man highly respectable as to situation in life, but of considerable
vanity. I said therefore to my friend, on leaving the town, You may tell
him that I expect to be at Nottingham in a few days, and though it be a
hundred and fifty miles distant, I will even come back to see him if he
will dine with me on my return.
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