reat
wealth; and having heard no other name for happiness, was sometimes
inclined to repine at my condition. But my mother always relieved me, by
saying, that there was money enough in the family, that _it was good to
be of kin to means_, that I had nothing to do but to please my friends,
and I might come to hold up my head with the best squire in the country.

These splendid expectations arose from our alliance to three persons of
considerable fortune. My mother's aunt had attended on a lady, who, when
she died, rewarded her officiousness and fidelity with a large legacy.
My father had two relations, of whom one had broken his indentures and
run to sea, from whence, after an absence of thirty years, he returned
with ten thousand pounds; and the other had lured an heiress out of a
window, who, dying of her first child, had left him her estate, on which
he lived, without any other care than to collect his rents, and preserve
from poachers that game which he could not kill himself.

These hoarders of money were visited and courted by all who had any
pretence to approach them, and received presents and compliments from
cousins who could scarcely tell the degree of their relation. But we had
peculiar advantages, which encouraged us to hope, that we should by
degrees supplant our competitors. My father, by his profession, made
himself necessary in their affairs; for the sailor and the chambermaid,
he inquired out mortgages and securities, and wrote bonds and contracts;
and had endeared himself to the old woman, who once rashly lent an
hundred pounds without consulting him, by informing her, that her
debtor, was on the point of bankruptcy, and posting so expeditiously
with an execution, that all the other creditors were defrauded.

To the squire he was a kind of steward, and had distinguished himself in
his office by his address in raising the rents, his inflexibility in
distressing the tardy tenants, and his acuteness in setting the parish
free from burdensome inhabitants, by shifting them off to some other
settlement.

Business made frequent attendance necessary; trust soon produced
intimacy; and success gave a claim to kindness; so that we had
opportunity to practise all the arts of flattery and endearment. My
mother, who could not support the thoughts of losing any thing,
determined, that all their fortunes should centre in me; and, in the
prosecution of her schemes, took care to inform me that _nothing cost
less than