The Adventures of Roderick Random

The Schoolmaster’s Recommendation

Strap returns with a gift from the schoolmaster—a wig and an enormous hat that had been reduced to a more manageable size. As Strap works on the garments, he delivers a rambling speech about their respective stations, noting their distant kinship through an amusingly confused genealogical explanation. When the narrator’s impatience prompts him to demand the point, Strap reveals that the schoolmaster has spoken on his behalf to a French apothecary seeking a journeyman. The position offers fifteen pounds annually plus room and board. The narrator seizes upon this opportunity immediately, demanding to be taken to the apothecary without delay.

Meeting the French Apothecary

The narrator and Strap find the schoolmaster at a nearby public house with the apothecary himself. The schoolmaster jokes about the narrator’s eagerness to escape through the window. The apothecary, Mr. Lavement, is a peculiar figure: a small, withered old man with an extremely low forehead, an upturned nose, prominent cheekbones, and loose, wrinkled skin. His mouth constantly contracts into a grin, revealing only four yellow fangs. Despite these eccentricities, he welcomes the narrator cordially, offers him beer, and tells him to come to his house the next morning.

Accepting the Journeyman Position

The narrator visits the apothecary’s establishment the following morning, where he accepts the journeyman position with its compensation of fifteen pounds per year plus lodging and meals. He plans to conceal his previously-acquired French language skills, gained while serving under Crab, hoping to overhear potentially useful or amusing information from the French household. The schoolmaster then arranges for a tailor to provide the narrator with clothes on credit and supplies him with a new hat, both to be paid from his first wages.