good words_, and that it is comfortable to leap into an estate
which another has got.

She trained me by these precepts to the utmost ductility of obedience,
and the closest attention to profit. At an age when other boys are
sporting in the fields or murmuring in the school, I was contriving some
new method of paying my court; inquiring the age of my future
benefactors; or considering how I should employ their legacies.

If our eagerness of money could have been satisfied with the possessions
of any one of my relations, they might perhaps have been obtained; but
as it was impossible to be always present with all three, our
competitors were busy to efface any trace of affection which we might
have left behind; and since there was not, on any part, such superiority
of merit as could enforce a constant and unshaken preference, whoever
was the last that flattered or obliged, had, for a time, the ascendant.

My relations maintained a regular exchange of courtesy, took care to
miss no occasion of condolence or congratulation, and sent presents at
stated times, but had in their hearts not much esteem for one another.
The seaman looked with contempt upon the squire as a milksop and a
landman, who had lived without knowing the points of the compass, or
seeing any part of the world beyond the county-town; and whenever they
met, would talk of longitude and latitude, and circles and tropicks,
would scarcely tell him the hour without some mention of the horizon and
meridian, nor shew him the news without detecting his ignorance of the
situation of other countries.

The squire considered the sailor as a rude uncultivated savage, with
little more of human than his form, and diverted himself with his
ignorance of all common objects and affairs; when he could persuade him
to go into the field, he always exposed him to the sportsmen, by sending
him to look for game in improper places; and once prevailed upon him to
be present at the races, only that he might shew the gentlemen how a
sailor sat upon a horse.

The old gentlewoman thought herself wiser than both, for she lived with
no servant but a maid, and saved her money. The others were indeed
sufficiently frugal; but the squire could not live without dogs and
horses, and the sailor never suffered the day to pass but over a bowl of
punch, to which, as he was not critical in the choice of his company,
every man was welcome that could roar out a catch, or tell a story.

All these,