soft, the civil, and compliant.

This openness to flattery is the common disgrace of declining life. When
men feel weakness increasing on them, they naturally desire to rest from
the struggles of contradiction, the fatigue of reasoning, the anxiety of
circumspection; when they are hourly tormented with pains and diseases,
they are unable to bear any new disturbance, and consider all opposition
as an addition to misery, of which they feel already more than they can
patiently endure. Thus desirous of peace, and thus fearful of pain, the
old man seldom inquires after any other qualities in those whom he
caresses, than quickness in conjecturing his desires, activity in
supplying his wants, dexterity in intercepting complaints before they
approach near enough to disturb him, flexibility to his present humour,
submission to hasty petulance, and attention to wearisome narrations. By
these arts alone many have been able to defeat the claims of kindred and
of merit, and to enrich themselves with presents and legacies.

Thrasybulus inherited a large fortune, and augmented it by the revenues
of several lucrative employments, which he discharged with honour and
dexterity. He was at last wise enough to consider, that life should not
be devoted wholly to accumulation, and therefore retiring to his estate,
applied himself to the education of his children, and the cultivation of
domestick happiness.

He passed several years in this pleasing amusement, and saw his care
amply recompensed; his daughters were celebrated for modesty and
elegance, and his sons for learning, prudence, and spirit. In time the
eagerness with which the neighbouring gentlemen courted his alliance,
obliged him to resign his daughters to other families; the vivacity and
curiosity of his sons hurried them out of rural privacy into the open
world, from whence they had not soon an inclination to return. This,
however, he had always hoped; he pleased himself with the success of his
schemes, and felt no inconvenience from solitude till an apoplexy
deprived him of his wife.

Thrasybulus had now no companion; and the maladies of increasing years
having taken from him much of the power of procuring amusement for
himself, he thought it necessary to procure some inferior friend, who
might ease him of his economical solicitudes, and divert him by cheerful
conversation. All these qualities he soon recollected in Vafer, a clerk
in one of the offices over which he had former