easily perceived from what I have said, and more from what I shall
further say, had she much time for play. She never therefore promoted
their being called for; and often insensibly diverted the company from
them, by starting some entertaining subject, when she could do it without
incurring the imputation of particularity.

Indeed very few of her intimates would propose cards, if they could
engage her to read, to talk, to touch the keys, or to sing, when any new
book, or new piece of music, came down. But when company was so
numerous, that conversation could not take that agreeable turn which it
oftenest does among four or five friends of like years and inclinations,
and it became in a manner necessary to detach off some of it, to make the
rest better company, she would not refuse to play, if, upon casting in,
it fell to her lot. And then she showed that her disrelish to cards was
the effect of choice only; and that she was an easy mistress of every
genteel game played with them. But then she always declared against
playing high. 'Except for trifles,' she used to say, 'she would not
submit to chance what she was already sure of.'

At other times, 'she should make her friends a very ill compliment,' she
said, 'if she supposed they would wish to be possessed of what of right
belonged to her; and she should be very unworthy, if she desired to make
herself a title to what was theirs.'

'High gaming, in short,' she used to say, 'was a sordid vice; an
immorality; the child of avarice; and a direct breach of that
commandment, which forbids us to covet what is our neighbour's.'

She was exceedingly charitable; the only one of her family that knew the
meaning of the word; and this with regard both to the souls and the
bodies of those who were the well-chosen objects of her benevolence. She
kept a list of these, whom she used to call her Poor, entering one upon
it as another was provided for, by death, or any other way; but always
made a reserve, nevertheless, for unforeseen cases, and for accidental
distresses. And it must be owned, that in the prudent distribution of
them, she had neither example nor equal.

The aged, the blind, the lame, the widow, the orphan, the unsuccessful
industrious, were particularly the objects of it; and the contributing
to the schooling of some, to the putting out to trades and husbandry the
children of others of the labouring or needy poor, and setting them
forward at the expiration of th