that are proper to be paid to each other's
sex, they squabble like two brothers. The father is one of those who
knows no better than that all pleasure is debauchery, and imagines,
when he sees a man become his estate, that he will certainly spend it.
This branch are a people who never had among them one man eminent either
for good or ill; however, have all along kept their heads just above
water, not by a prudent and regular economy, but by expedients in the
matches they have made into their house. When one of the family has, in
the pursuit of foxes, and in the entertainment of clowns, run out the
third part of the value of his estate, such a spendthrift has dressed up
his eldest son, and married what they call a good fortune, who has
supported the father as a tyrant over them, during his life, in the same
house or neighbourhood. The son in succession has just taken the same
method to keep up his dignity, till the mortgages he has ate and drank
himself into, have reduced him to the necessity of sacrificing his son
also, in imitation of his progenitor. This had been for many generations
the whole that had happened in the family of Sam. Bickerstaff, till the
time of my present cousin Samuel, the father of the young people we have
just now spoken of.

Samuel Bickerstaff, Esq., is so happy, as that by several legacies from
distant relations, deaths of maiden sisters, and other instances of good
fortune, he has, besides his real estate, a great sum of ready money.
His son at the same time knows he has a good fortune, which the father
cannot alienate, though he strives to make him believe he depends only
on his will for maintenance. Tom is now in his nineteenth year, Mrs.
Mary in her fifteenth. Cousin Samuel, who understands no one point of
good behaviour as it regards all the rest of the world, is an exact
critic in the dress, the motion, the looks and gestures of his children.
What adds to their misery is, that he is excessively fond of them, and
the greatest part of their time is spent in the presence of this nice
observer. Their life is one continued constraint. The girl never turns
her head, but she is warned not to follow the proud minxes of the town.
The boy is not to turn fop, or be quarrelsome; at the same time not to
take an affront. I had the good fortune to dine with him to-day, and
heard his fatherly table-talk as we sat at dinner, which, if my memory
does not fail me, for the benefit of the world, I shall set dow