ting
liberality, and the means she had of gratifying it, while I shed tears
at the remembrance of my own squandered thousands. I had never been
hard-hearted, but I had always given to importunity, rather than to want
or merit. I blushed, that while I had been absurdly profuse to cases of
which I knew nothing, my own village had been perishing with a
contagious sickness.

"'While I amused myself with drawing, my aunt often read to me some
rationally entertaining book, occasionally introducing religious reading
and discourse, with a wisdom and moderation which increased the effect
of both. Knowing my natural levity and wretched habits, she generally
waited till the proposal came from myself. At first when I suggested it,
it was to please her: at length I began to find a degree of pleasure in
it myself.

"'You will say I have not quite lost my romance. A thought struck me,
that the first use I made of my pencil should serve to perpetuate at
least one of my offenses. You know I do not execute portraits badly.
With a little aid from fancy, which I thought made it allowable to bring
separate circumstances into one piece, I composed a picture. It
consisted of a detached figure in the background of poor Stokes, seen
through the grate of his prison on a bed of straw: and a group, composed
of his wife in the act of expiring, Fanny bending over a wreath of
roses, withered with the tears she was shedding, and myself in the
horrors in which you saw me,

Spectatress of the mischief I had made.

"'Wherever I go, this picture shall always be my companion. It hangs in
my closet. My dear friends,' added she, with a look of infinite
sweetness, 'whenever I am tempted to contract a debt, or to give in to
any act of vanity or dissipation which may lead to debt, if after having
looked on this picture I can pursue the project, renounce me, cast me
off forever!

"'You know Lady Jane's vein of humor. One day, as we were conversing
together, I confessed that at the very time I was the object of general
notice, and my gayety the theme of general envy, I had never known
happiness. 'I do not wonder at it,' said she. 'Those who greedily pursue
admiration, would be ashamed to sit down with so quiet a thing as
happiness.' 'My dear Lady Jane,' said I, 'correct me, counsel me,
instruct me: you have been too lenient, too forbearing.' 'Well,' said
she, with a cheerful tone, 'as you appoint me your physician, as you
disclose your case, and ask re