le to the other three ladies than this offer, and
with extreme satisfaction she settled here.

Upon this increase of income it was that my friends established the
community of indigent gentlewomen, which gave you so much pleasure.

Lamont was much struck with the conduct of Lady Emilia; she had shewn,
he said, a degree of delicacy and prudence which exceeded what he had a
notion of; he never met with a woman who foresaw the little chance she
had for happiness in marrying a man who could have no inducement to make
her his wife but a nice, often a too nice, sense of honour; and who
certainly could have no great opinion of her virtue. The folly of both
men and women in these late unions was the subject of our conversation
till we separated. In the afternoon the ladies asked us to accompany
them to the house they had just taken for the new community, to which
they were obliged to go that day, as they had set several persons to
work there. They keep a post-coach and post-chaise, which with the help
of ours, were sufficient to accommodate us all. A short time brought us
to the house, a very old and formerly a very fine mansion, but now much
fallen to decay. The outside is greatly out of repair, but the building
seems strong. The inside is in a manner totally unfurnished; for though
it is not empty, yet the rats and mice have made such considerable
depredations on what time had before reduced to a very tattered
condition that the melancholy remains can be reckoned little better than
lumber.

The last inhabitant of this house we were informed was an old miser
whose passion for accumulating wealth reduced him into almost as
unfortunate a state as Midas, who, according to the fable, having
obtained the long-desired power of turning every thing he touched to
gold, was starved by the immediate transmutation of all food into that
metal the instant it touched his lips. The late possessor of the house I
am speaking of, when he was about fifty years old, turned away every
servant but an old woman, who if she was not honest, was at least too
weak to be able to put any dishonesty in practice. When he was about
threescore, she died, and he never could venture to let any one supply
her place. He fortified every door and window with such bars of iron
that his house might have resisted the forcible attack of a whole army.
Night and day growled before his inhospitable door a furious Dutch
mastiff, whose natural ferocity was so increased by